


A Claim Without A "But" In It

by Order_Of_The_Forks



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, a few biphobia mentions, a lot of swearing, fake dating au, prom au, takes place in America
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:21:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 33,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23618938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Order_Of_The_Forks/pseuds/Order_Of_The_Forks
Summary: “Okay, let’s think this through.” Eponine pushed herself up to her elbows. “Cons. You have to pretend to date Enjolras for a month. You fucking hate Enjolras.” Grantaire frowned. “Pros. You get to go to prom for free. Maybe you’ll get other free shit, who knows. And it's only a month. You’ll probably piss off Caroline by dating a dude, you know? That’s definitely a plus.”Shit. Grantaire hadn’t even thought about pissing off his ex, but once those cards were on the table, it was looking pretty good. “Do you think I should do it?”Eponine sighed and fell back onto her stomach, her elbows red from carpet burn. “I don’t know. If anything, it’ll be a good story.”
Relationships: Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables)
Comments: 38
Kudos: 95





	1. An Objective Bummer

What a bitch.

That was what Grantaire was thinking about in class. She really had been a bitch all along, hadn’t she?

And it couldn’t have been a coincidence she dumped him for a college guy the day after he came out, right?

It was truly miraculous, Grantaire decided, how the mind could constantly keep itself occupied. Always shifting from thought to thought and somehow never focusing on the right thing.

Right now, for instance, he should have been focusing on the Mexican-American War debate they were having. Plenty of people were; the kid next to him was frantically scribbling down notes. When he looked over, it looked like he was writing in Russian, that’s how quickly he was writing. And Enjolras was yelling.

He was standing at his desk (everyone else was sitting. Grantaire didn’t know when he had stood up) and yelling, a crumpled piece of notebook paper marked to death with notes clutched in his fist like the battle flag of an ancient revolution. 

“You can’t just start a war because you were _offended_ -” he was saying. 

Realistically, how was Grantaire expected to focus? The debate was honestly so dull, and he had just been dumped the period before.

The other kids on his team were looking at him expectantly, and he realized he had raised his hand without really noticing. “Well, uh, there had been a treaty stating-”

“Signed under duress!” Enjolras interrupted.

“Enjolras!” The teacher, looking harried as ever, snapped. “This is your third warning.”

He sat back down with a petulant scowl. 

It was a dumbass debate. ‘Who was at fault for the Mexican-American War?’ The Mexican team won, obviously. It was so clearly the right answer; there wasn’t even any deliberation, no ‘who shot first, Han or Greedo?’ Clearly America was at fault, making it completely arbitrary for Enjolras to have been so invested in the debate. 

As they packed up at the end of class Grantaire wanted to say something like “hey, you did good” as he passed his desk on his way out, but he knew that Enjolras wouldn’t like him for it- he had displayed open contempt for Grantaire ever since the first day of freshman year.

It didn’t matter. 

At lunch he sat on one of the little picnic tables behind the cafeteria, the ones donated by the class of ‘65; his usual haunt. Him and Eponine talked like they always did and shared a bag of dried cranberries like they always did. It had been the same pattern since freshman year.

And, same as every day, that group sat on the bleachers, the social justice club (the one that he frequented with perfect attendance, god knows why), Les Amis de L’ABC, with Enjolras taking a fitting seat at the top of the rows of metal seats. 

He always wondered what it would be like to sit with them. As much as he loved Eponine, it was kind of an objective bummer to sit with one person every single day for four years of high school.

“She’s a bitch,” Eponine said. “You’re honestly a saint for putting up with her shit for as long as you did.”

“Yeah, no, because she wasn’t a bitch when I was with her. I wouldn’t have dated her if she was a bitch the whole time.”

Eponine crunched a potato chip loudly. “Maybe not to your face. Sorry to burst your bubble, but she was always a bitch.”

“Fuck her,” Grantaire said weakly.

“Fuck her,” Eponine repeated enthusiastically. 

Grantaire was in a bad mood by the end of the day. He had gotten a C on a math test, which normally wouldn’t have been so bad if not for the fact that he had looked over and saw that the kid who sat next to him, the one who rarely came to class and when he did, came high, had gotten an A-minus. 

And, on top of it all, it was a Tuesday. 

Meetings were held every week in Madame Buchard’s French classroom at 2:45 sharp, giving just enough time after school to pee and ‘meet with teachers if necessary.’ Or, in Grantaire’s case, stop by the Dunkin across the street for a chocolate frosted donut and a vanilla chai. 

Like every week, Grantaire rolled into Madame Buchard’s room at 2:45 sharp with a casual, “afternoon, captain” in Enjolras’s direction. He had done it his second meeting with them, and, after witnessing the positively _excellent_ shade of burgundy it made Enjolras’s face turn, had done it ever since. 

Enjolras turned a little redder than usual that day. Grantaire grinned as he slid into his back-row desk.

Like usual, he had no idea what the week’s discussion was on. At this point, he considered the club purely as an extracurricular for college apps; he could write his essay on that walkout they had done earlier in the year over racist graffiti found in the third floor boy’s bathroom. Sure, he had only gone because he wanted to skip science, but he had _gone_ , and that was all that colleges needed to know.

He had forgotten his sketchbook at home, like a dumbass, but he had a notebook that a family friend’s adult daughter had given him for his birthday two years ago. It said “GET IT DONE” on the cover. Grantaire had no idea what it meant- it had always felt vaguely threatening- but paper was paper, lined or not. Most times he just started drawing without knowing what it was going to turn out as. Today he decided, before his pencil had even met the paper, that he was going to draw the pattern on Enjolras’s shirt, an interlocking cage of assorted leaves and daffodils. 

And maybe he had been staring at Enjolras for too long, trying to figure out the angle of the petals, because he said, loudly, enough to shock Grantaire from his reverie, “what do you think, Grantaire?”

They could have been talking about anything. The democratic primary, food insecurity, an upcoming bank heist. And Grantaire couldn’t just say nothing, because everyone was looking at him, waiting for a decent response. Not even a decent response- just a response. “I think,” he said slowly, hoping for a clue to drop from the sky like one of the ceiling tiles had on Marcus Robert’s head last year, “that we… should combine with the cooking club.”

If Grantaire looked close enough, he could almost see Enjolras’s soul leaving his body.

He really had no idea what Enjolras had against him. He vaguely remembered saying _something_ in the bio class they shared freshman year, but he couldn’t recall what for the life of him and he didn’t know what he could’ve said that would’ve warranted the outright abhorrence Enjolras held for him for two whole years. 

They’d had the same gym class junior year, and by then the hatred had seemed to subside. It was possible that they had been drawn together out of necessity as the only two class members disinterested in ultimate football, but Enjolras hadn’t actually been mad when Grantaire hit him in the head during their volleyball unit. That was part of the reason why he actually bothered showing up for the first meeting of Les Amis de L’ABC at the beginning of senior year.

Enjolras didn’t acknowledge his presence in those first few meetings, which Grantaire was thankful for. With Enjolras, he assumed, no interaction was good interaction. 

~

There was supposed to be a vote during the next week’s meeting. It was March and Grantaire still didn’t totally know what they were voting on. Something about getting reusable trays for the cafeteria, he was pretty sure. But Combeferre took too long reading the vice principal’s response to their previous email and they ended up going over. Going over meaning they actually reached the 3:16 alarm Enjolras had set in case he somehow broke his obsessive addiction to checking his watch every ten seconds and they went past the 3:15 end time for meetings. Enjolras seemed genuinely surprised when the alarm went off; Grantaire was pretty sure he even jumped.

“Okay, everyone,” he announced once he had gathered his wits about him after the explosive shock of his alarm going. “We didn’t get to the actual vote, so we’ll just do that tomorrow at lunch. Sound good?”

A considerable number of eyes immediately landed on Grantaire. “It’s fine,” he said, because he felt like he needed to say something rather than sit there like a dead duck. “Just vote without me.”

“No!” Enjolras blurted. “What kind of democratic process would this be if we didn’t listen to the voice of the forgotten man?”

Grantaire kind of took offense to being the ‘forgotten man,’ but that did not override his apathy towards whatever fake-ass vote they were going to have. “Calm down, FDR. I probably wouldn’t have voted today, anyway. Just forget I ever existed and have your vote without me.”

“Dude,” Bousset cut in. “Just sit with us at lunch tomorrow.”

For a moment Grantaire debated the possibility of pushing back, of fighting with Enjolras about democracy for god knows how long. But Grantaire was not a driven person. So, as he always did, he chose the path of least resistance. “Okay. Fine.”

So on Wednesday he went outside and passed his usual table, feeling oddly guilty, taking a seat at the very bottom of the bleachers where nobody else sat. 

“So,” Cosette was saying with the energy only a member of the student council could have, “have you all bought your prom tickets yet?”

A vague murmur of assertion came up around the group. Nobody wanted to put up with Cosette’s prom speil again. She had been insatiable ever since the announcement for the theme came out in December: Old School Elegance. Grantaire thought it was a stupid theme. And besides, tickets were more expensive than usual because their school spirit-lacking senior class didn’t spend enough money at the various fundraisers the council had held over the course of the year. All in all, it didn’t provide much incentive to attend.

“I’m not going,” Enjolras said.

All eyes turned to him. “Why not?” Jehan demanded.

Enjolras shrugged. “I don’t want to spend eighty dollars on tickets to a mediocre dance just so that the funds can go into the sports program like we know it will. I have better things to spend my money on.”

“It’s not a _mediocre dance_ ,” Jehan protested, who, although he was a junior and had yet to attend a prom, was completely convinced it was a magical staple of the high school experience. “It’s a celebration of your time in school.”

“A celebration of illegal drinking and unplanned pregnancy, maybe.” Enjolras took a sip of water, cool as a cucumber. He had the kind of bottle with a tally of hours down the side to make sure you drank enough water. “I don’t want to waste that much money on some outdated tradition.”

Grantaire could tell everyone wanted to interject based on the sheer amount of mouths that opened to speak, but because he had absolutely no sense of self-preservation, he mumbled, “I’m not going either.”

Jehan frowned. “What’s your righteous cause?”

“Same as Enjolras’s, basically.” Grantaire didn’t look up at him, but he knew Enjolras was making that face, the ‘don’t put my name in your mouth’ face. “I don’t want to have to work overtime just to go to prom when I could stay home and watch Netflix for free.”

“Netflix isn’t free,” Combeferre pointed out. 

“It is if you mooch off your grandma’s.”

“So neither of you are going?” Courfeyrac said, pointing two fingers over to them. “That’s unacceptable. It’s- it’s like Jehan said. It’s a celebration of your senior year and you- Enjolras, you’ve worked harder than anyone I know. You deserve this.”

Enjolras deserved the world. Grantaire didn’t deserve jack shit. All he did was sit around and make everyone else’s lives miserable. He had nothing to show for his senior year, just a string of tardy slips and B-minuses. And the B-minuses were if he _tried_. He was never the kind of kid to get an A just by being smart, the kind that would have a big graduation party and wear their college’s t-shirt to class in June. He had nothing to celebrate.

“Will you guys just leave it?” Grantaire cut in, his knuckles white around his fork. “If we don’t want to go, we don't have to.”

“Look,” Enjolras said. “If eighty bucks fell in my lap right now, maybe I’d rethink it. But right now, I’m perfectly fine with staying home and watching Netflix like Grantaire said. Now please, could we talk about something else?”

There was a painful silence. Grantaire looked down at his lunch. It was French toast sticks, which everybody else loved. Grantaire had no idea why. Even just the smell of them made him feel sick. If he had been sitting with Eponine, they would split their customary bag of dried cranberries. Every other week Eponine stole a box from the supermarket where she worked, and Grantaire had grown to depend on them on days when the cafeteria food was spectacularly shitty. 

“Let’s vote,” Enjolras said at long last. Everyone seemed very eager to change the subject. “If you think the school should abandon their use of styrofoam lunch trays in favor of reusable trays to keep non-recyclable materials out of landfill, raise your hand.” 

To Grantaire, it seemed like half of the group raised their hands. But Enjolras counted heads quickly and nodded sharply. “Alright. If you believe the school should keep using single-use trays in order to avoid the energy consumption of a commercial dishwasher, raise your hand.”

Again, it looked like an even split. “Okay, it looks like reusable trays win by-”

“Grantaire didn’t vote,” Combeferre interrupted.

Enjolras fixed Grantaire with the full heat of his stare. “Why didn’t you vote?”

“Could you, uh, repeat the options again?”

For a moment, it looked as though Enjolras was going to tell him to fuck off, but his passion for the forgotten man won out and he said, “keep using styrofoam trays or not.”

“Oh. Uh, stop using them?” Grantaire couldn’t help but think that no matter what he said, it would be the wrong answer.

“Okay.” Enjolras looked harried, even just by their little interaction. “Okay. Reusable trays still win by three votes.” 

Grantaire still felt the itch of eyes upon him. “Democracy!” He cheered weakly. 

~

They had history next period. Lucky for him, Enjolras was already riled up from lunch, so Grantaire resigned to keep his head down for the entirety of the class period lest he do something too heinous to be ignored by the captain of the thought police. He put his earbuds in (hidden through his hoodie, thank you very much) and doodled in the margin of his notes, skulls and seashells and happy little forest creatures that he could show Jehan at next week’s meeting.

It worked for the majority of class and Grantaire thought that he could actually make it through without incident, given that he could survive five more minutes.

“Hey,” Enjolras said. 

He looked up. The rest of the class had dispersed from their seats and were talking in small groups amongst themselves; Enjolras was standing directly in front of Grantaire’s desk. “Hey,” he parroted back. 

“Would you be my partner?”

The words, any meaning of the combination of words that left Enjolras’s mouth, escaped Grantaire’s mind. “I’m sorry?”

Enjolras looked the same way he did every time he had to deal with Grantaire. A little irritated, a little weary. “For the project. Do you want to work together?”

“What project?”

“The 1920s project!” Enjolras said, a little too loud for the classroom. “We’re doing a project on the 1920s and I need a partner.”

Grantaire looked around the room. Sure enough, everyone else seemed to be coupled up. “What about Jack Clement?”

“I already worked with him. We can’t have repeat partners.”

Yeah, everyone Grantaire knew the name of was taken already. Grantaire, who hadn’t apparently been listening, had unknowingly drawn the short straw. “Sure.”

Enjolras looked genuinely relieved. “Great. What topic do you want to pick?”

Grantaire looked down at the list of topics that had been placed, not so neatly, on his desk. “I don’t know. Just not the politics one.”

“Oh,” Enjolras said, a little deflated. “I wanted the politics one.”

“Okay. Sure let’s do that one.”

“Great.” The bell was seconds away from ringing and both of them knew it. Grantaire began to pack up his bag. “Do you want to meet sometime to work on it?”

“The library tomorrow?”

Enjolras shook his head and bit his lip in thought. Grantaire looked away. “I can’t do Thursday. Or Friday. How about we meet at my house on Saturday? Damn, my mom has wine club on Saturdays.”

“We can do my house on Saturday.” Grantaire’s house was almost habitually empty, so it was a good chance that no one would ever have to know that he invited Enjolras to his house. Grantaire was willing to take that chance. “Also, what the fuck is a wine club?”

The bell rang and Enjolras looked up at the clock as if it had wronged him. “It’s a long story.”

Enjolras was gone like a flash from the classroom. He had probably never gotten a tardy slip in his life, worried that it would go on his permanent record or something. 

Grantaire slowly shuffled after him, out into the crush of the hallway. 

Enjolras was coming to his house.

What the fuck had he done?


	2. A Hard Punch to the Stomach

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A cake, a fake, and a stupid mistake.

Enjolras was convinced they would get an A. Grantaire was betting on a B-plus. Had Enjolras been working alone, the A would’ve been in the bag, but Grantaire was pretty sure he was only a burden on the whole process. Any time he brought forth a source, Enjolras would immediately shake his head and declare it unreliable. Because of course Enjolras had a subscription to JSTOR. Grantaire was pretty sure his biggest contribution to the project was adding a fun graphic of beer bottles to the Prohibition section of the slideshow. 

And sure, they were working on a stupid project about something Grantaire had no interest in, but it wasn’t actually that bad. Their only argument throughout the entire four hour work session was about what font to use and even that was barely an argument, nothing compared to the screaming matches they’d gotten into in meetings before. Of course, there was a minor chapstick debacle, one that Grantaire would never mention the details of to any of his friends, but they finished their project in good spirits. They had never done that before.

Enjolras had walked to Grantaire’s house and by the time they were done, it was raining hard enough to drown a man. “I’ll give you a ride,” Grantaire offered.

“I’m not supposed to drive with people in high school. My mom doesn’t trust them.”

“Dude, I’m not letting you walk for twenty minutes in the rain. If she asks, say that my parents drove you.”

Enjolras blinked. “Okay.”

The car ride was short, overall, but as Enjolras led him through the back streets, the ones framed with ornamental foliage and elegant, old houses, it seemed to last forever. They listened to Grantaire’s driving playlist (it automatically cued up whenever he got in the car) and Enjolras listened to all his jokes. “And that house there,” he said, pointing to an ostentatiously large McMansion, “is where Mr. Darcy lives.” 

Enjolras laughed, actually laughed out loud. A sharp ringtone cut through the laughter and Enjolras picked up the phone, smile still wide on his face. “Hey, Courf.”

“Where are you?” Courfeyrac said. 

Grantaire, against his better judgement, said, “hey, Courf!”

He could almost hear Courfeyrac’s raised eyebrow through the phone. “Why is Grantaire there?”

“He’s driving me home.” 

Enjolras turned the phone to face him. It was a video call, apparently, because Courfeyrac blurted, “what the fuck is wrong with your mouth?”

‘Chapstick,’ Grantaire was about to say, but Enjolras laughed again, which Grantaire would never get used to. He’d never really seen him out of meetings, seen him just living with his friends. It was positively glorious. “It’s a long story.”

“I won’t ask,” Courfeyrac said, voice dripping with implication. “What do you want for your birthday?”

“It’s your birthday?” Grantaire interrupted.

“In a week,” Enjolras said sheepishly. “Turn left here. And please don’t get me anything.”

Grantaire grinned. “Alright, captain.”

“I’m serious! Courf, please tell everyone that if any of you get me anything, I’ll ban you from Les Amis for a month.”

“Oh no,” Courfeyrac teased. “I’ll just get you a book. See you guys! Be safe!”

Enjolras pointed at the house to turn into and Grantaire dutifully pulled up to the curb. He at least wanted to make him walk a few feet in the rain, just to make him suffer a little. “Why didn’t you tell me about your birthday?”

“We’re here,” Enjolras said quickly. “Thanks for the ride.”

Maybe Grantaire should have been partners with Enjolras more often. A couple B-pluses could do wonders for a transcript.

~

They turned in their project online that Monday and their teacher commented a smiley face; Grantaire showed Enjolras at lunch and got a high five in return. It was almost alien. Something about being forced together for four hours in Grantaire’s living room made Enjolras loosen up a little, treat Grantaire like more than a verbal crash-test dummy during meetings. Not all the time, though. Enjolras was, at his core, who he would always be; an enormous asshole. No rose-tinted glasses would ever disguise that fact. He was the kind of person who would muscle his way through the world, acquiring close, heaven-sent friends (the only people who could put up with him) and scores of enemies. Grantaire was the sand in the gears, like when you open a jigsaw puzzle and there’s clearly a piece of a different puzzle mixed in. Nobody else butted heads with Enjolras quite like Grantaire did, and he found it strange to watch them interact, watch Enjolras say something dickish and have _nobody_ call him out for it, save for a scoff and a head shake from Combeferre. But when they weren’t at each other’s throats Enjolras was genial and mellow. 

He ate lunch with them now. He felt bad about leaving Eponine behind but she took it upon herself to sit with her sister’s friends, the druggie alt-goth juniors. 

On the Wednesday after the project Combeferre had already taken Grantaire’s usual spot on the bleachers by the time he arrived. When Grantaire asked where the hell he was supposed to sit, he just pointed up to the second-to-top row of bleachers, where he used to sit. Next to Enjolras. 

Enjolras didn’t see the interaction or Grantaire’s struggle to climb over every other member of the ABC to get to his spot but offered a little wave when he arrived. Grantaire was surprised. He had almost expected to get pushed off.

“Everyone,” Enjolras announced, cutting through all the other conversations on the bleachers. It was like magic. “We’re going to have an emergency Les Amis de L’ABC meeting tomorrow. Does that work with everyone?”

“Thursday? Why?” Musichetta interrupted. 

“We have a meeting with the superintendent on Friday. I want us to be prepared.”

Courfeyrac raised his hand. “Is that the only reason?” He asked, a mockery of shyness.

Enjolras narrowed his eyes. “That’s the only reason.”

“So, who’s excited for prom?” Cosette blurted. It was a desperate attempt to get conversation started again but it worked, and Grantaire would forever thank Cosette for her lovely, innocent charm.

“I wish they’d just drop the prom thing, don’t you?” Grantaire asked. 

Enjolras looked a little surprised that Grantaire was talking to him, like it had just sunk in that they were sitting next to each other. “Oh. Yeah, I do.”

Grantaire looked down at his lunch. It was a hamburger, loosely speaking. The patty was more football field turf than meat and there was one sad, limp piece of bacon lying askew across the top. “Hey,” Enjolras said. “Want some of my veggie straws?”

~

Grantaire was leaving to throw out his tray when Courfeyrac ran up to him, grabbing him by the elbow, causing the remnants of his milk carton to spill onto his pants. It was just a little discoloration around the knee, nothing big. Thank god it didn’t make him look like he had pissed himself- that was the worst. But Courfeyrac still swore and ran to get napkins, thankfully stopping just short of drying off Grantaire’s pants himself. “I’m sorry about your pants, but I wanted to tell you,” he said, a bit short of breath, “Enjolras’s birthday is tomorrow.”

“Okay?” 

“You know, it would be nice if you did something for him.”

Grantaire snorted. “Like what? Become a registered socialist?”

“Don’t play dumb,” Courfeyrac scolded. Grantaire was a little lost. “I’ve figured it out. And I think he would like it if you did something.”

“He said no presents,” Grantaire pointed out.

Courfeyrac sighed. “Fine. Do whatever you want. I tried to help.” He tucked his hands in the breast pockets of his coat, elbows sticking out like the wings of a baby bird, and turned away.

“God- fine.” Courfeyrac stopped his retreat, a triumphant grin on his face. Grantaire sighed. “What kind of cake does he like?”

As soon as school ended Grantaire was out like a flash of lightning, desperate to get in front of the horrible traffic leaving the school parking lot and get to the grocery store and back before the meeting started. He ended up getting stuck behind some gas-guzzling truck full of football players that held up the entire line of cars waiting to leave. Even after breaking a few road laws (stop signs were really just suggestions, anyway) he was back at the high school with one medium sized yellow cake at about 2:49. 

The door to Madame Buchard’s room was open and Grantaire listened to try and hear the chaotic din of before-meeting chatter, only to be met by silence in the empty hallway. Grantaire could see Enjolras at the front of the room, gesticulating widely with his clipboard. He didn’t know whether to knock or say something, so he just stood in the doorway, waiting to be seen.

Nobody saw him until Enjolras went to plug his laptop into the projector and Joly decided to go fill up his water bottle during the transition period, only to be stopped by Grantaire standing at the door like a ghost. 

“Oh! R’s here!” 

Enjolras turned so quickly from his computer screen that his hair spun a second later than his head, tangling in front of his face. He quickly brushed it out of the way. “You’re late.”

“Yeah.” Grantaire just stood there, dumbly, waiting for a sign to come in. “I brought cake.”

Enjolras squinted at the cake as if he looked close enough, it would reveal itself to be a mass of worms or something. “Grantaire,” he mused, as though he had just seen the human attached to the cake. “Why did you…”

“Courfeyrac told me to get a cake,” he blurted, hoping to shift the blame onto someone else. If it wasn’t his idea, but one of his friend’s… maybe. Grantaire stepped into the classroom and set the cake down on the nearest desk. “Sorry.”

“No, no.” Enjolras turned back to his computer. “It’s nice.”

“We,” Combeferre cut in, gesturing to the gathered group, “actually have a surprise for you.”

“We’ve got a lot to talk about-” Enjolras began weakly.

“No, you can’t deflect from this one!” Courfeyrac shouted out, clambering down from where he sat, cross-legged, on the top of the cabinet where Mrs. Buchard kept the textbooks. He pulled an envelope from his backpack and stood, solemnly, in front of Enjolras. “I know you weren’t going to go to prom. But we-” he made a sweeping motion to the room, “felt like it would be a shame if you didn’t get to go. So we pooled the money and,” he held out the envelope, which Enjolras took without looking at it, “we bought you and Grantaire tickets to prom.”

Grantaire’s mouth felt as though he had eaten sawdust. “I’m sorry?” Enjolras said, his voice about three octaves higher than normal.

“Now you can live out your secret desires of running for prom court,” Courfeyrac continued.

“But you need a queen for that,” Enjolras interjected, sounding overwhelmingly confused. Which, in Grantaire’s opinion, didn’t do much to dissuade the idea of his hidden monarchist fantasy.

“Traditionally, yes,” Bousset broke in. “But don’t you think it’s high time we had our first two prom kings?”

It wasn’t so much a wave of understanding that washed over him as a hard punch to the stomach. Enjolras was picking at his fingernails and of _course_ , that’s what all the cryptic prom questions were about, the reason Combeferre had switched seats a month ago so that Enjolras and Grantaire could sit next to each other at lunch. 

“Courf…” Enjolras began. “Guys, I-”

“Can I talk to Enjolras outside for a second?” Grantaire interrupted, voice strained.

Enjolras nodded like a crazy person and followed, shutting the door so as to not let it slam. For a moment they stood outside of Madame Buchard’s classroom, neither knowing quite what to say. “Parlez-vous Francais,” the sign on the door said. “Il ouvre les portes.” 

“They think we’re together,” Grantaire said.

Enjolras’s face fell, his eyes tracking downwards as he stumbled to the same realization Grantaire had. He had an odd expression, something that Grantaire would never quite be able to place.

“Why?” He said, seemingly unable to make eye contact. “I mean, the only time we’ve really hung out outside of school was… the 1920s project. At your house. But that hardly seems like an opportunity for romance, right?”

The 1920s project. It had rained, and Grantaire had given him a ride home, and- “Courf video called, remember?” He had wanted to know what Enjolras wanted for his birthday, the birthday that was _today_ and Enjolras was spending his birthday outside of Madame Buchard’s classroom, gnawing mindlessly on his bottom lip. “And I had an allergic reaction to your chapstick.”

Enjolras rolled his eyes. “Jesus- it wasn’t my fault, okay? How was I supposed to know you’re allergic to eucalyptus?”

“No, no, no- it’s… I had an allergic reaction to your chapstick and my lips,” Grantaire waved his hands vaguely about his face, “got all red and puffy, yeah? So I guess, if you looked at it a certain way, it might have looked like I was…” he grimaced, “making out with someone.”

“With _me_.”

Grantaire rubbed at his eyes with the palm of his hand. “What do we do?”

“We go, obviously. That’s a hundred and sixty bucks down the drain if we don't.”

If there was anything in the world Grantaire wanted less to do it was go to prom with Enjolras. “But-”

“Look.” Enjolras took a deep breath and pressed the tips of his fingers against his temples the way he always did during a test or before a big meet in debate. “They’re doing something- something misguided, yeah, but extremely kind. It would… I can’t ruin that by turning them down.”

Grantaire shoved his hands in his pockets. He was staring at the closed door behind Enjolras’s head, the happy smiling French people on the posters. “But how do we tell them we’re not dating?”

“I mean,” Enjolras said. “What _can_ we say? Realistically?”

It felt like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over him. _We tell them they’re wrong_ , Grantaire thought. _We tell them literally anything to make them drop the subject forever_. 

They were quiet for a few moments.

“If we talk any longer they’re going to think we’re making out.”

Something about that, the straightforward tone, the positively _absurd_ insinuation, made Enjolras dissolve into giggles. And they were both laughing, the messy kind of laughter that came from a complete breakdown of control. 

Enjolras took a few deep breaths, making a big show of inhaling and exhaling like he was a fucking yoga teacher or something, which only made Grantaire laugh harder. Enjolras swatted him on the arm. “Okay. If we just… let it go, maybe they’ll leave it be. Like, people go to prom as friends all the time. We go in, we thank them for their generous gift-” Grantaire snorted- “and we don’t mention anything about the dating. Sound like a plan?”

Grantaire made a sloppy salute. “Aye-aye, captain.”

Enjolras rolled his eyes and turned to open the door. “I can’t believe they think I’m dating _you_.”

“I’m a fucking delight,” Grantaire shot back.

As soon as the door swung open all eyes in the room, which had been directed at Combeferre, who had been giving the debrief in Enjolras’s absence, landed on the two of them in the doorway. 

Grantaire felt like he had swallowed a rock. Or a bite of food that wasn’t chewed enough. Enjolras put on that smile that would do so goddamn well in customer service and began, pleasantly, “Thank you for your generous-”

“Were you guys making out or something?” Courfeyrac interrupted.

 _No_ , Grantaire was about to say, _why would you ever think that?_ “Yep,” Enjolras blurted.

The sound that arose from the assembled group was less of a laugh or gasp than it was of a roomful of howler monkeys. Courfeyrac made some kind of half-feral sound and threw his head back in wild laughter.

Grantaire felt as though someone had just thrown him into a pit of lions. Enjolras had blotchy red hives blooming on his neck, which offered some small consolation that at least they were both equally embarrassed in the whole thing. 

“Can I talk to you in the hallway again?” Enjolras said through gritted teeth.

Grantaire barely even noticed the way someone went, ‘oooh!’ like they were in elementary school and they had gotten called to the goddamn principal’s office.

As soon as they were out in the hall, door closed, the light fixture above them humming, Enjolras’s resolve seemed to crumble. “Fuck!” He buried his hands in his hair and when he withdrew them, the 

“What the fuck was that?” Grantaire hissed. “You said we wouldn’t say anything!”

“I panicked!” 

“You couldn’t have panicked with your mouth shut?” 

Enjolras scowled at him. “Fuck you.”

“No, I- okay.” It felt like his heart was racing, but when Grantaire lifted two fingers to the pulse point like they had taught him in seventh grade health class it was beating along as usual, the steady pace feeling rather insensitive to his situation. “We can’t fight out here. They’re- I don’t know what they’ll think. Can we talk somewhere else? About this?”

“Can you give me another ride?”

~

Enjolras sat silently in the passenger seat of Grantaire’s car, a half-eaten birthday cake on his lap, tapping his fingers to the beat of the radio on the plastic lid of the cake box. 

“They definitely think we’re together now,” Enjolras said for the second time since they had gotten in the car. 

“Yeah.”

“We have to fake it.”

Grantaire took a left turn a little too hard; his right wheel just scraped the curb, sending a flock of birds scattering into the air from their hiding spot in a bush. “ _What_?”

“They think we’re together already,” Enjolras said slowly. “It’s… easier if we just go along with it. Pretend we really are together.”

“I never pegged you as the non-confrontational type.”

“This is different!” Enjolras’s voice was shaky with panic. Something about it, the way his usually steady voice faltered, made Grantaire’s stomach drop. “It would- how would we explain it? I panicked at the meeting, sure, but would they buy the chapstick story? You bought me a cake, for god’s sake.”

“It was Courfeyrac’s idea,” Grantaire mumbled. “And the chapstick story is the _truth_.”

Enjolras sighed and buried his head in his hands. “Fine. If you don’t want to, I can deal with it. I can…” he inhaled sharply. “ _Fuck_.” 

Enjolras was giving him a lifeline. A way out. So why did Grantaire feel so shitty about it? Maybe it was the way Enjolras was sitting there, clutching the cake in his lap, head against the window, eyes trained on the sidewalk.

Grantaire didn’t know how he remembered the way to Enjolras’s house, but he found himself back on his idyllic, tree-lined street, weaving his way through cars parked dickishly along the side of the road (he had never understood that. They had a perfectly fine driveway right there). “We’re here.”

Enjolras lifted his eyes, looking, in that moment, incredibly tired. “Thank you for driving me. Just,” he looked over at Grantaire, one hand on the door handle, “please don’t tell anyone about this.”

Something about that, the genuine pleading in Enjolras’s voice, made Grantaire feel even more shitty than he did before. “Let me think about it, okay?”

Enjolras nodded. “Okay.”

Grantaire wanted to hit his head against the steering wheel. He wanted to drive his car into the side of Enjolras’s house. He wanted to- fucking- get high with Eponine or something. 

Eponine’s phone had been confiscated by her parents for sneaking out a few days ago, but he knew she practically lived on her parent’s old computer, one of the ones that was so thick it was basically a cube. Grantaire pulled up his email and typed out, fingers shaking, “come over. you won’t BELIEVE what the fuck just happened.”

Enjolras had disappeared into his house, the lights in the front clicking off behind him. Grantaire turned on the radio.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wassup wassup this goes out to the two ppl that commented on the first chapter, k_reads and avengingwinter y'all are the real ones  
> i'm going to try and upload new chapters on friday from here on out so feel free to hold me to that because i know i won't  
> also going to try and have the chapters be a similar length but i doubt it  
> anyway please comment and come back again! love y'all


	3. A Bad Habit of Dating Bitches

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enjolras breaks a promise, Grantaire has an undeniably terrible revenge plan.

“You have a bad habit of dating bitches, R,” Eponine said, lying on the floor of Grantaire’s basement. 

“I’m not dating him,” Grantaire corrected. “Yet.”

Eponine rolled over onto her stomach and made grabby hands at the open bag of Doritos by Grantaire. He pushed them over to her. A few chips spilled on the ground, but he found himself utterly beyond caring. “Funny how you didn’t argue with the bitch thing,” she pointed out.

“I won’t argue with the bitch thing.”

“Are you going to do it?” She asked, the corners of her mouth stained orange from the Dorito dust. 

“I don’t know.” Grantaire was lying on his back, looking up at the ceiling of the basement. His house was built in the 70s and the basement was the perfect epitome of that, all wood-paneled walls and a hideous orange wall-to-wall carpet. The ceiling was made of those tiles like they had at the high school and for a moment it felt like he was back in sophomore year gym class when they had a unit on mindfulness and they all had to lie on the floor of the ‘dance studio’ and wait for their hippie teacher to play the singing bowl, symbolizing the end of their half hour of meditation. “He seemed really desperate.”

“You can’t just do shit for people because they’re desperate,” Eponine said. “Otherwise you’ll just get fucked by everyone.”

Grantaire sighed. “I didn’t ask for you to be rational, you know.”

“I can’t help it.”

“If I do, you know, pretend to date him, what do I lose? Like, realistically?” 

“Yeah, but what do you gain?” Eponine countered. “You’re just a pawn in this scenario either way.”

“Fuck,” Grantaire murmured. “You’re right.”

“Okay, let’s think this through.” Eponine pushed herself up to her elbows. “Cons. You have to pretend to date Enjolras for a month. You fucking hate Enjolras.” Grantaire frowned. “Pros. You get to go to prom for free. Maybe you’ll get other free shit, who knows. It’s also only a month. You’ll probably piss off Caroline by dating a dude, you know? That’s definitely a plus.”

Shit. Grantaire hadn’t even thought about pissing off his ex, but once those cards were on the table, it was looking pretty good. “You’re so fucking right.”

“Fuck her biphobic fucking ass,” Eponine snarled, as if she had practice. Which she did.

“Do you think I should do it?”

Eponine sighed and fell back onto her stomach, her elbows red from carpet burn. “I don’t know. If anything, it’ll be a good story.”

“And I can break up with him,” Grantaire mused. “He never said I couldn’t break up with him.”

“Yeah.”

Grantaire reached for his phone, sitting innocently at its charger. Enjolras’s number wasn’t saved in his phone. He had a group chat for Les Amis but only a few members had the honor of being saved as contacts, so he had to scroll up to the top, the messages from September when everyone introduced themselves so that people who cared about that kind of thing could put people’s names in. “I’m in,” he texted. “Meet me at lunch tomorrow?”

He got a reply almost immediately. “Sounds like a plan,” Enjolras wrote. And then, a second later, “thank you.”

Grantaire buried his face in the carpet. It was dirty and scratchy and smelled like nothing he recognized. 

“R,” Eponine said. “Do you know how to make pot brownies?”

~

They met at Grantaire’s usual table. It had taken some finagling- Grantaire had told Eponine that he was going to skip lunch and speed-write his English essay due the next day in the library (something he probably should have done and would end up regretting that night) and that she should just go to Subway without him instead. Enjolras assured him that he had told his friends he was meeting with his history teacher about studying techniques. Grantaire could see them at their designated little amphitheater on the bleachers, talking with their hands and sorely missing a leader, donned in red, sitting on the top bleacher, hair framed in sun. 

That leader was sitting next to him with a spiral-bound notebook open on the table. It was black, very professional. Enjolras tore out a page from the back and began neatly ripping off the nubbly bits on the end from where it had come out of the notebook. 

“First things first,” he was saying, “we need to make rules.”

“Why?”

Enjolras frowned. “We can’t just dive into this kind of thing without any guidelines. It’ll be a disaster.”

“I don’t want to burst your bubble,” Grantaire said, taking a sip of his soda (the cafeteria only had these weird, low-sugar sodas. The only good flavor was cherry), “but it kind of already is.”

“But it doesn’t have to be,” Enjolras attested, underscoring his point by jabbing at the air with his pencil. “That’s what I’m trying to say.”

“Okay, fine. What are the rules?”

“We have to figure that out,” Enjolras explained, already sounding extremely exasperated. If he was going to be this easily vexed all the time, it was going to be a long road to fake-prom.

It was cold for April. Grantaire wished he had a jacket with him. “Well, what kind of rules do you think we should have?”

“We should have to tell each other if we’re going to do anything.”

“Like what?” Grantaire snorted. “Like, ‘Hey, just a head’s up, I’m about to hold your hand?’ Don’t you think that’ll be suspicious?” 

Enjolras rolled his eyes. “Never mind.”

“What if we agreed on some stuff that was fair game for both of us? Stuff like holding hands.”

Enjolras looked down at his notebook, still woefully blank, and back up. “That’s actually a pretty good idea.”

“Thank you.” Grantaire felt, for some reason, patronized. Enjolras tapped his pen against the table. “Are you fine with holding hands?”

Enjolras scoffed, which was a little high-and-mighty for someone who had just been acting like captain consent a second ago. “Of course. Hugs?”

Grantaire shrugged. “Yeah. What about kissing?”

He regretted it as soon as he said it. An odd look came over Enjolras’s face, something between disgust and fear. “I don’t think we’ll need to do that.”

Grantaire nodded noiselessly. His mouth felt dry. He took another sip of soda.

Enjolras cleared his throat. “What about an arm around the shoulder? Or just general touching of that caliber?”

Only Enjolras would say ‘caliber’ in a casual conversation. “Yeah. That’s fine.”

“We can deal with other things on a case-by-case basis. But if we do plan on doing something out of bounds,” Enjolras frantically wrote down what they had agreed upon in a bulleted list under the header ‘BOUNDARIES.’ Bulleted lists were so Enjolras, Grantaire thought absently. He was going to have to stop doing that, assigning arbitrary things to Enjolras’s personality. Now whenever he saw a bulleted list he was going to get pissed off. “We should still warn the other.”

Something in Enjolras’s stony expression reminded Grantaire of the spy movies he used to love as a kid, how they were so dramatic, all disguises and fake names. “Yeah,” he said with a laugh, “like a code word.”

Enjolras brightened. “Yes! What about… ‘Aunt Kathy?’”

“I’m sorry?”

“You know, if you were going to do something, you could say something like, ‘I have to call my Aunt Kathy later tonight.’” Enjolras’s hopeful grin was a little heartbreaking. 

“I’m sorry, but that’s an awful idea.”

Enjolras scowled. “Okay, genius. Do you have any better ideas?”

“No.”

“Alright, then,” He said, looking much too smug. “I think Aunt Kathy is our best bet.”

“Wait,” Grantaire blurted, stopping Enjolras’s pencil before it touched the paper. “We can’t both have an Aunt Kathy. What if you have Aunt Kathy and I have Aunt Susie?”

Enjolras smiled and wrote it down. “You’re good at this.”

Grantaire did _not_ feel a surge of pride at hearing that. Nothing of the sort.

Enjolras, for the first time since they had sat down, opened his lunch box. It was an honest-to-goodness lunch box, the kind kids ate out of in kindergarten. He took each item out and laid them on the table systematically; somehow Grantaire could picture a six-year-old Enjolras doing the very same thing. It was like a lunch out of a commercial or something: a sandwich, cut vertically down the center, a bag of baby carrots, a bag of veggie straws, three Oreos. A napkin. 

“What kind of sandwich is that?” Grantaire asked. 

Enjolras took it out of the baggie and lifted it up, turning it around a little to inspect it. “Turkey.”

‘Turkey’ was being generous. It was turkey with lettuce and tomato and probably mustard, too. The platonic ideal of a sandwich.

Lunch in the cafeteria that day was chicken fingers and mashed potatoes. The chicken fingers were pretty good if you smothered them with barbecue sauce, but the mashed potatoes were ass. They came from a can and tasted like atomic waste. Grantaire could pack his own lunch but he never summoned up the effort to. He didn’t have someone to make his sandwiches for him, not like Enjolras.

“How are we going to break up?” Grantaire said, not even thinking. 

Enjolras looked up from his sandwich. “Oh. I hadn’t thought of that. I guess we’ll break up after prom.”

“It would be weird if we broke up right after prom, though.”

Enjolras chewed his bottom lip. He did that when he was thinking, Grantaire realized. His bottom lip was covered in calluses and barely-healed wounds. “We should wait a week or so.”

“Then it’s more realistic.”

Enjolras bit a baby carrot in half. It was surprisingly aggressive. “We can say… the stress of prom planning strained our relationship.”

“The stress of prom planning,” Grantaire repeated. What the fuck was that supposed to mean?

Enjolras frowned. “Would you rather cheat on me?”

 _I would never_ , Grantaire wanted to say. Which was stupid to even think. Enjolras wasn’t his to cheat on in the first place and even if he was, it’s not like Grantaire would want to pledge his undying fidelity to the human equivalent of an office supply store. “Fine. Stress of prom planning.”

“How are we going to tell people?” Enjolras opened his bag of veggie straws and wordlessly offered it to Grantaire. He took one. “That we’re together. Fake-together.”

“I’m thinking a cake,” Grantaire mused. “Like a gender reveal, except you cut it and it’s red and I say ‘guess what, everyone! I’m boning the fearless leader-’”

“That’s objectively the worst thing I’ve ever heard,” Enjolras interrupted. “And we’re not. Boning.”

“I mustn't tarnish your virtue,” Grantaire grinned. “I had forgotten, Sandra Dee.”

Enjolras rolled his eyes so hard Grantaire half expected them to never return to place, to recede back into his skull, leaving only whites from then on. “Jesus.”

“What do you think we should do?”

“I'm not sure.” Because Enjolras was incapable of saying ‘I don’t know.’ He always had to maintain some sense of superior intellect. “What do you think?”

“You just asked me. And you didn’t like my idea.”

“Right.” Enjolras crunched another carrot. “I think we should just tell them. Bite the bullet.”

Grantaire could picture it. It would be a cacophony of jokes, inappropriate questions, suggestive quips. In a word, unbearable. “Absolutely not.”

Enjolras shrugged and looked back down to his lunch. Grantaire watched as he finished off his food in silence, save for the carrots’ sharp ‘crack’ under his teeth. There was a dogwood tree (gifted by the family of Martha Wiley, according to the plaque) behind Enjolras’s head; it was in full bloom and every time the wind blew, white petals, translucent in the sun, would drift down and land on the picnic table. 

Enjolras gasped. Like, an actual gasp. “Oh!” A wide, wicked grin spread across his face. “A _promposal_.”

Grantaire felt his heart stop for a second. “No. Hell no.” Images of viral videos, posters with cheesy puns, the Instagram account of promposals from their school. Oh god, what if they got on the Instagram page? “And- besides, we already got our tickets to prom. They kind of promposaled _at_ us, if you think about it.”

“We can work around that.” Enjolras was still smiling like a madman. “It’s perfect! It shows that we’re a couple without it having to be awkward. Come on, it’ll be great.”

If Grantaire had to describe promposals in a word it would absolutely be ‘awkward.’ If they got on the Instagram page, or even one person took any pictures, it would get spread around. His parents followed all his social media accounts; they would see. If they saw they would ask about it and he would have to tell them he was ‘dating’ Enjolras and then they would invite him over for dinner and tell the grandparents and- “why are you so intent on the promposal thing?” 

Enjolras shrugged. “It would be fun.”

“It would _not_ be fun. Besides,” he began, already sensing the whole he was about to dig himself into, “who would prompose to who?” 

“Well, since you’re so against the whole idea, I guess I would prompose to you.” Enjolras opened his baggie of Oreos; he picked one up and separated the two halves, scraping the filling out with his teeth. “I have lots of ideas.”

Grantaire couldn’t help but laugh. “God, why?”

“Shower thoughts.” It wasn’t meant to be suggestive, but the tops of Enjolras’s ears colored anyway.

Grantaire nodded. “Ah.”

“Shut up.” Enjolras hid his steadily reddening face by dissecting another Oreo. “I have amazing ideas. I have connections.”

“Enjolras,” Grantaire said. “No promposals. I’m serious.”

Enjolras smirked. “Okay.”

“I’m _serious_.”

“I _said_ okay.”

~

Enjolras had promised no promposals.

He had, hadn’t he?

They had had that whole conversation at lunch and Enjolras had agreed on no promposals.

So why was Bousset’s minivan parked on the side of the road no less than ten feet from his mailbox?

Grantaire had seen them from the upper window, so there was a good chance they didn’t know for sure he was home. Except- shit, his car was in the driveway.

Careful to avoid any windows, Grantaire snuck downstairs to the kitchen. It was not out of the question that they would break into his house, and he would like to have a clear view of the door if that happened. Who fucking knew what they were capable of.

He stood at the kitchen counter eating chips for a good fifteen minutes. If they were going to break in they made no immediate effort to do so. 

There was a knock at the door.

Grantaire froze and put down his bag of chips but did not answer it. 

Another knock. Then, after a few seconds had passed, they rang the doorbell.

Grantaire didn’t have one of those fancy houses with the windows on either side of the door so he had no idea who was on the other side. Best case scenario it was Enjolras and his friends; worst case scenario it was a serial killer. Or worse, a student athlete raising money for the booster club. 

“This is the Riverside Police Department,” came a voice from outside. “Would you please answer the door?”

Grantaire’s blood ran cold. Why the hell were the police at his door? Shit, if they asked to be let in they might ask to see his room and if they asked to see his room, they might open his desk drawer and see his extraordinarily illegal stash of weed just sitting there on top of his used notebooks. He stood, mostly against his own will, and walked to the door, hand pausing over the door handle. Bousset’s car was probably just parked illegally or something. Yeah, that was it.

He opened the door. The first thing he noticed was that the police officer was a woman, which offered a small degree of relief. A white woman- but a woman nonetheless- so he was probably a little less likely to get gunned down on his porch. It was just her, in uniform, looking like she had come to kick ass and take names. Grantaire was wearing a t-shirt from the library's 2016 summer reading program. If anything, that might paint him in a good light. A good kid who read books sometimes.

“Are you James Grantaire?” She asked. He nodded. She smiled (not a good smile- a formal, customer service smile; the one Enjolras gave him when he acted up in meetings before making him feel like a misbehaving toddler) and took a small notepad and pen from her pocket. “I’m officer Woodhouse. I’d just like to ask you a few questions about a recent vandalism in town.”

Oh, thank god. 

“Have you been to or ordered from House Pizzeria in the last week?” 

Grantaire shook his head a little too vigorously. Shit, now he looked suspicious. “No,” he answered honestly.

She nodded curtly and wrote something down in her notepad. “Were you in the Main Street area last Tuesday, the 7th, between the hours of 7 and 9 PM?”

“No. I was at home.”

“Alright.” She wrote something else down. Grantaire would give his left arm to know what she was writing. _Suspect acts suspiciously nervous_ , maybe. _Suspect seems like the kind of guy to keep weed in his desk drawer_. “Just one more question, and then you’re free to go.”

Grantaire hadn’t realized how fast his heart had been beating. He wondered, belatedly, if he should have demanded to have a lawyer present. “Okay.”

“Last question.” She looked down at her notebook; the corners of her mouth were twitching as if she was trying not to smile. “Will you go to prom with Enjolras?”

“Fuck!” Grantaire exhaled, not even thinking. “Oh, shit, I’m sorry.”

She grinned. “I’m going to need a yes or no, James.”

“Fuck, yes? Yes.” Bousset’s van was still parked down the street. He could see the backseat door opening slowly. “I said yes!” He shouted down at them. 

The doors opened and the assembled ABC spilled out onto the sidewalk. Enjolras came sheepishly in front of the car from the passenger’s seat, holding a large sign in front of him. Grantaire wanted to melt into the floor and become another stain on the concrete porch. 

They had agreed on no promposals, though. For this exact reason. Because Grantaire wouldn’t like it. It’s not like he willingly signed up to be Enjolras’s date (a little voice whispered that he kind of did, that night with Eponine), the least he could do was respect his wishes. But Grantaire couldn’t get mad in front of his friends or the lovely police officer lady who had nearly given him a heart attack. 

Enjolras made his way forward. His sign said, in large, chunky block letters, “LIBERTÉ, ÉGALITÉ, HOMOSEXUALITÉ.”

Grantaire fought valiantly against a smile. It was a very clever sign, but that hardly excused it. 

“Is this your friend?” Was what Grantaire first thought to ask when Enjolras reached the doorway, pointing at officer Woodhouse. 

He nodded; his cheeks seemed split by the enormous, pompous grin on his face. “I told you I have connections. How’s that for a promposal?”

Grantaire didn’t respond, just pulled Enjolras into a hug. The poster crumpled between their bodies. “I’m going to fucking kill you,” he murmured, which was probably not a great thing to say in front of a cop. 

Enjolras did not say sorry. He wordlessly pulled away from the hug and handed Grantaire the wrinkled poster. “I’ll see you at school tomorrow.”

From where they still loitered at the van, Courfeyrac (standing next to Combeferre, who had his phone out, dear god) started chanting, “kiss! Kiss! Kiss!”

Grantaire frowned. “That’s not happening.”

“Come on!”

“No,” Grantaire affirmed. Enjolras, to his credit, shook his head too. “I’m not doing that here. Thank you, officer Woodhouse. I’ll see you tomorrow, Apollo.”

The tops of Enjolras’s ears turned red. They always did when Grantaire called him that. He liked to hide it, but everybody knew. For someone so confident, Grantaire thought, he was surprisingly easy to fluster.

There were little pink clips in Enjolras’s hair, keeping it from falling in his face. Combeferre’s idea, no doubt, so that you could see him clearer on camera. This was real, Grantaire realized. They even had it on video. 

Enjolras stepped back, walked a couple of steps down the sidewalk without turning. “See you tomorrow.”

Bousset’s van pulled smoothly away from the curb and Grantaire watched it go, followed by officer Woodhouse’s police car. 

So they all knew. And judging from Combeferre’s camera work, soon everybody would.

Grantaire’s heart was racing, the kind of terror you felt before going over the crest of a rollercoaster. 

It was a nice day out. Maybe Grantaire would go for a walk. 

And maybe, he thought, prom wasn’t going to be so awful. 

~

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

It was a constant chorus in Grantaire’s head, repeating with each footfall. Left, right, left right. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

“It’ll be fun,” Courfeyrac had said. “We’ll all help out.”

It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Part revenge, part sleep deprivation, part stupid, stupid teenage decision. Who knew Grantaire’s demise would come about in the form of an online sign-up sheet with a balloon background?

It was a Monday, so there wasn’t a meeting; this meant Grantaire was going to have to find Enjolras during passing period, which was a herculean feat. Enjolras was, unfortunately, one of the breed which actually preferred to come to class before the bell so he power-walked everywhere lest he arrive anywhere late. 

So Grantaire stood, like a stalker, outside of Enjolras’s Gov classroom. There was a chart of the three branches of government on the door and Grantaire studied it, waiting for the period to end. Apparently Congress and the Senate were two different things. You learn something new every day, his mom always said.

The bell rang; in any other hallway, the doors would immediately swing open, kids flooding out like a stampede. But AP classes were a different beast- they actually taught to the last minute of class. Grantaire could see the students dutifully beginning to pack up their stuff through the little window next to the door, even though he could hear the din of students in the hallway descending. 

Enjolras was the last person out. He had been talking with the teacher, his hands moving restlessly as he spoke. 

“Grantaire,” he said once he had left, looking a little too suspicious. “What are you doing?”

“I need to talk to you.” 

Enjolras bit his lip. “How long will this take?”

Grantaire shrugged. “I don’t know. What do you have next?”

“AP Lit.” 

Ah, AP kids. Unable to say the name of their class without putting the level before it. “How important is AP Lit?”

Enjolras’s lip was starting to bleed. “I guess I could get there a little late. Ms. Spaulding loves me.”

“Can we go somewhere quieter?” 

Enjolras nodded and looked around. They were in the new extension; to their left was the stairway leading down to the lobby. No one ever used it. “We can talk in the stairs.” 

The stairwell was empty and still smelled vaguely of cleaner. Grantaire leaned against the wall, the zippers on his backpack making a weird grating sound against the tile. “You have to promise not to get mad at me.”

Enjolras raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

“I didn’t get mad at you for the promposal. Which, to clarify, I am still pissed about.”

“Yeah, but I got you, didn’t I?” Enjolras goaded, completely missing the point.

Grantaire sighed. Might as well bite the bullet. Enjolras didn’t want to miss AP Lit and Grantaire didn’t want to spend any more time in this empty stairwell than necessary. “I signed us up to run for prom court.”

Enjolras’s face fell. “What?”

“It was Courfeyrac’s idea.” Come to think of it, everything was. Grantaire was going to have to have a serious chat with him. “I was pissed about the promposal and I wanted to get back at you.”

“You realize this affects you too, right? That’s a pretty shitty revenge plan.” The tops of Enjolras’s ears were starting to turn red. Whether it was from anger or embarrassment or some other pissed-off emotion was unclear.

“It was midnight, what do you want me to say?”

Enjolras pressed his fingers to his temples. “We can take it back, right?”

“No,” Grantaire admitted sheepishly. “They’ve already sent it to student council to vote on. And from the looks of it, they’re pretty excited about having the first gay couple on prom court.”

“Shit,” Enjolras mumbled. “I mean, we’ll just have to hope they don’t vote for us.” He fixed his eyes on Grantaire’s shoes and took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s think about this logically. First, student council has to vote us into prom court and there’s at least one Republican in student council, right? So maybe that won’t even happen. Then, if we actually want to run for king and- king, we’ve got to get the majority of the student vote, and there are definitely more Republicans in the student body that we haven’t accounted for. So that’s a pipe dream, too.” He exhaled, shook out a crick in his neck. “We just have to hope that this is a non-starter.”

“Yeah.” Grantaire nodded. “Yeah. You’re right.”

Enjolras brought his thumb up to his lip and wiped away a bit of blood. He looked down at the copper smudge on his thumb and wiped it away on his jeans. “When do they announce who’s on prom court?”

“Friday.” Grantaire had spent more time on the student council website after he had realized what a dumbass he was for signing up him and Enjolras than he ever had in his entire life. He practically had their schedule memorized.

“Well,” Enjolras heaved a sigh, his shoulders rising and falling significantly. “I guess we wait until Friday. You’ve got to-” he faltered, seemed to grasp for the right words. “You’ve got to _think_ about these things, Grantaire. This is- precarious enough as it is without you adding new shit to the mix.” 

Grantaire had thought Enjolras was taking it well. But there was that underlying irritation, the truth rising to the surface. He had just fucked it up like he always did. Because they were _precarious_. 

“Okay.”

Enjolras nodded vacantly, eyes darting around the empty stairwell. “I’d better go.”

“Yeah.”

“Ms. Spaulding doesn’t love me _that_ much,” Enjolras joked, laughing weakly.

Grantaire nodded wordlessly.

“Okay.” He shifted his backpack on his shoulders, hooking his thumbs under the straps. “I’m going to go. Bye, Grantaire.” 

The keychains on his backpack swung as he descended the stairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [FOR CLARIFICATION GOING FORWARD] there is no prom court at my school (we suck) so i know nothing about how it actually works. everything about prom court i'm going to write from here on out is completely made up. if any of you guys actually knows how it works, please tell me
> 
> this is like the only time i've kept to a schedule for a fic lol
> 
> so online school has been kicking my ass... how about y'all? tell me about it in the comments
> 
> thanks to like the five people reading this lmao


	4. A Fucking Fever Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A kind of disastrous birthday party.

Combeferre had posted the promposal video. It had gotten onto the Riverside High School Promposals Instagram account and it had already gotten over a hundred likes, despite being up only for a few hours. 

Grantaire knew, logically, that no one was going to _do_ anything, whatever that anything may be. It was Wednesday and he hadn’t spoken to Enjolras since Monday, when he spilled the beans. He had been in the meeting on Tuesday, but he put his head down and sketched. Enjolras hadn’t made any moves to talk to him. He knew the group was all supportive (which was sweet, considering they weren’t actually dating), perhaps a little too supportive, but he couldn’t help but return to his usual table, empty and peaceful beneath the dogwood. 

It was an unusually hot day for early April. Grantaire set his head on the table, closed his eyes, and let the sun warm his face. 

“Hey,” Eponine said.

Grantaire hadn’t noticed her sit down.

“So I saw it on Instagram, but are you going to tell me yourself?”

Grantaire took a sip of his milk. They had the third lunch period, so all the sodas were out by the time he had reached the cafeteria. “I, uh, I guess I’m dating Enjolras now.”

“You guess?” Eponine quirked an eyebrow. 

“I am.”

“Huh.” Eponine looked down at Grantaire’s tray. She had nothing in front of her, so either she didn’t have a lunch today or she wasn’t planning on staying. “Why?”

“What do you mean why?”

“I mean, why? From what I’ve heard, the only times you’ve ever talked to this guy you’ve ended up in a screaming match about something. Not to mention, like I said before, you’re just his pawn in this whole fake dating thing.” 

Grantaire shrugged. “I don’t know. It seemed like the right thing to do.”

“What, con your entire friend group into giving you free tickets to prom?”

It was Grantaire’s turn to look at Eponine contemptuously. “It’s not like that.” He hunted for the right words. He couldn’t possible explain the way Enjolras’s hands had shaken on the plastic lid of the cake box that night in Grantaire’s car, the way he had lit up when they were planning their stupid fake dating rules. “We’re going to prom and that’s the end of it.”

Eponine laughed. “I can’t believe it. You and… and… goddamn Captain America.” 

“I don’t think that’s the most sound metaphor,” Grantaire said, but he was laughing too. “He’s more like, um, like… did you ever watch Liberty Kids?”

“Hi,” came Enjolras’s voice from behind.

As soon as Eponine set eyes on Enjolras she dissolved into giggles. “You’re too damn funny,” she said, choking on laughter as she shouldered her bag and got up from the table. “Fucking Liberty Kids!”

Enjolras sat down across from him, watching Eponine leave as if she had grown a second head. “What were you two talking about?”

“Nothing that concerns you,” Grantaire said, quickly smothering his amusement. 

Enjolras shrugged and pulled his lunch bag and a book out of his backpack. His backpack was navy blue. Something about Enjolras made Grantaire a little sad; he was always too professional, a little too adult. He laid out all his food, systematic and neat. “I’ve got to do some reading for class, so I’m afraid I won’t be the best company.” 

“That’s fine.” 

Enjolras didn’t say anything, just opened his book and began to read. Grantaire watched him as he turned a page, absently biting into a carrot with the same ferocity he had the other day. He was beginning to think that that was just how he ate carrots. 

“You’re reading Moby Dick?”

“For my senior research project, yeah.” 

Grantaire couldn’t help but laugh. “Isn’t that, like, 600 pages?”

Enjolras still didn’t look up from his book. “585.”

“Dude, you’re going to be so screwed. You realize the first hundred pages are due next week, right?”

Enjolras scowled, finally making eye contact with Grantaire. He wished he hadn’t. “Yes, I do. That’s why I’m trying to _read_.”

Grantaire held up his hands in surrender. Enjolras went back to his book.

“You know,” Grantaire said after about five minutes of silence. “You’re going to have to pretend you, you know… like me.”

“I do,” Enjolras responded, but he still didn’t look away from his book. “We’re friends.”

Were they? Grantaire had to wonder. Before this arrangement, they hadn’t been very amiable. Grantaire distinctly recalled one occasion when Enjolras had glared at him across the room in history for a solid half hour and he couldn’t even remember why. “Yeah, but it doesn’t always seem like you can tolerate my presence.”

Enjolras turned a page stoically. “It’s not my fault you’re annoying sometimes.”

“Gee, thanks.” Grantaire finished off his milk. He didn’t have much to eat, if you took the inedible things off the table. Just a yogurt and steamed corn.

He started in on the corn.

Enjolras began to get more restless, looking back and forth from his book to the bleachers, where the rest of Les Amis sat. Eventually he set down his book and sighed. “Do you think we’re unconvincing?”

“What do you mean?”

“We need to be convincing. I don’t half-ass things, Grantaire.”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

Enjolras rolled his eyes. “This was a bad idea.”

 _This was your idea_ , Grantaire corrected.

The bell rang. 

Enjolras stood up quickly, shoving his things back into his bag. “Are you going to Jehan’s party on Thursday?”

“What party?”

Enjolras frowned. “His birthday party. You should’ve gotten an e-vite.”

“I don’t check my email.”

“Well, check it. It’s at seven at Jehan’s house. You’re supposed to dress up as a literary character.” Enjolras narrowed his eyes. “Do you have a present?”

Grantaire wasn’t unconvinced that Enjolras had X-ray vision. He always felt transparent when he looked at him that way. Like Enjolras could see past his t-shirt and skin and straight into his guts and the deep, black parts of his soul. “Should I?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Enjolras said, beyond exasperated. “It’s a birthday party. Just get him a book, that should be fine.”

“Okay,” Grantaire mentally catalogued all of the books in his house. He had an old copy of the Secret Garden that nobody would miss. “Okay. I’ll be there.”

Enjolras had a lot of faces. Steely determination, bitter resentment, begrudging acknowledgement. Grantaire inspired weary irritation quite often. But his favorite, by far, was when a small smile tilted up the corners of his mouth, then he nodded, once, and his eyes seemed to say, ‘I’m glad.’ 

Grantaire could’ve melted right there in the sun, but he would make it to that birthday party if he killed him in case he could see that face again.

~

He has guitar class with Bousset the next period. 

Guitar seemed like a good idea last year when they were doing course selections; it was known as the class for stoners and slackers who wanted to fill their art credit. Grantaire had all his arts credits (he had twice as many as necessary, actually), but he had an open slot because he dropped science, so guitar it was.

Unfortunately, the old, easy guitar teacher ‘retired’ (he had catcalled a student from his car, but the administration wasn’t talking about that) over the summer and was replaced by a hardass Irish woman who would take away their phones if they used the wrong strumming pattern. They were doing partner projects- learn how to play one piece of your choosing. The only hitch was that it had to be written before 1950; apparently she had been a contextually famous trad musician in Dublin before moving to America and tried to inspire the glory of Irish traditional music in her teaching wherever she went. It didn’t really work. So, in search of a suitable song, Bousset scrolled through Spotify to find music while Grantaire drew on his ankles. 

“When did you start dating Enjolras?”

Grantaire looked up. The fluorescent lights were bright and he couldn’t help but blink like a madman for a few seconds. “What?”

“When did you and Enjolras start dating?”

Grantaire shrugged. “I don’t know. Not long ago.”

Bousset looked back down at his phone. Some song started playing, tinny, out of the speakers. It sounded like country. “Were you ever going to tell us?” 

“I don’t know,” Grantaire repeated, because that seemed to be all he was capable of saying nowadays. So much was happening and Grantaire felt like he was just being dragged along. But his mouth had an excellent ability to spout bullshit, so he just kept talking. “It was new. And weird. I’m sure we would’ve eventually.”

“Were you, like, trying to hide it from us?” Bousset continued, stopping the song and picking another. “Because you and Enj certainly don’t act like a couple.”

“No,” Grantaire said. It felt like the right thing to say. In a fictional scenario where they were actually dating, Enjolras would definitely tell his friends. He wasn’t the kind of person to hide a relationship. Or lie about it. He looked back down at his ankle, where a twisted garden of flowers and strange, winding symbols was beginning to bloom up his calf. “No. It just… I don’t know.”

“You know you can tell us anything, R.” When he looked up, Bousset looked weirdly genuine. So genuine that Grantaire almost spilled his guts about the fake dating right there. “The Amis will always have your back.”

He was expecting a shovel talk. Something like that. Not… whatever this supportive brotherhood shit was. The light fixtures sizzled overhead. _I think I really like him_ , Grantaire almost said.

Which.

Okay. 

Okay, maybe he did really like Enjolras. It felt unfair that he was coming to this realization in a high school practice room with a piano that wasn’t even tuned and padding on the walls so that, what, the band kids wouldn’t get pissed about missing a beat and kill themselves? And he was stuck in a fake dating prom hellscape with his _crush_ , if that’s what that was. And now they were running for prom court. 

But the worst part was that once they broke up, that was it. Why would he hang around? A week after prom, they would break up and it would be because of ‘the stress of prom planning’; there was no way it wouldn’t be messy and the Amis would take Enjolras’s side, obviously, because there was no way their friendship wouldn’t be conditional. Enjolras would paint Grantaire as the bad guy and he would be out of the group with one protest in junior year to show for it. _Fuck_ , he wanted to scream. 

“Yeah,” he croaked.

“So I found this song- and it was written in 1948, so she can’t get mad at us. Wanna listen?”

~

Jehan’s house was a quaint ranch-style place just down the street from Enjolras’s. It was the kind of postwar house where you could just see the smiling white family from the advertisement in the driveway, presenting their own little slice of the American dream. Grantaire had wrapped the copy of the Secret Garden and dressed up, as instructed. 

As he stood on the stoop, preparing to ring the doorbell, he suddenly remembered one day in elementary school when he was the only one to dress up for Halloween in his entire fifth grade class. Fifth grade was too old for costumes, apparently. He had gone home that day and cried for an hour. 

But, he assured himself, if there was one group of people absolutely guaranteed to dress up, it was the ABC. 

The door was answered as soon as he rang by a smiling, round-faced woman with a baby in her arms. Jehan’s mother, presumably. “Hello, dear!” She crooned. “Welcome. Leave your shoes on the mat, the kids are in the basement.”

Grantaire thanked her and placed his shoes on the rubber mat next to the door. Judging by the number of shoes, almost everyone else was there already. 

The basement was loud and only became louder as Grantaire descended the stairs, all chatter and pop music blasting from some unseen speaker.

There was a table of food at the bottom of the stairs where Cosette was standing with her back to him pouring herself a cup of soda. Grantaire’s fears of being the only one to dress up were abated by the fact that she was wearing a _gown_. It floated around her ankles as she turned.

“Grantaire!” She gave him a once-over. “Who are you?”

He winced. “Gatsby? It was the only thing I could think of. And I had this suit from the freshman formal, so…” Cosette took a sip of her soda. Her hair was gathered into an intricate updo, little pearl-beaded barrettes all over her head. “Who are you?”

She grinned ear-to-ear. “Marius and I came as Lizzie and Mr. Darcy.” She shimmied her hips a little to make the dress move. It was lovely, a delicate blue, lacy and ornate. “Isn’t this dress just amazing? I was a bridesmaid in a family friend’s wedding and I just had to wear it again.”

“It’s awesome,” Grantaire said, feeling rather stupid. 

“C’mon! We’re playing never have I ever.” Cosette took him by the hand and dragged him into the basement. There was one big, L-shaped couch and a couple bean bag chairs scattered around. Plenty of people were sitting on the floor, Enjolras included. 

“Never have I ever,” Combeferre was saying, “snuck out of the house.”

About half the room put down a finger. Grantaire took a seat on the couch by Enjolras, who shot him a look and gestured, keeping his fingers in their place (he had three fingers left), to sit by him. Grantaire slid off the couch and onto the carpet. 

“You dressed up,” Enjolras whispered.

“Yeah,” Grantaire whispered back. “You told me to.”

“Who are you dressed as?”

“Gatsby,” he said. It didn’t get less embarrassing the second time he said it. “It was the only thing I could think of and-”

“No, it’s good.” 

“Never have I ever,” Marius said, “drank alcohol. More than a sip.”

Grantaire put a finger down. To his surprise, so did Enjolras. “Who are you?” He asked.

Enjolras was wearing black pants with suspenders with a white shirt that reminded Grantaire, bizarrely, of the Pirates of the Carribean movies. “Ishmael.”

“Oh,” Grantaire said.

The game went on. Grantaire, despite arriving late, got out pretty quickly. Everyone’s stuff was stupid, like ‘never have I ever gotten a ticket’ or ‘never have I ever kissed someone.’ That was the problem with being friends with nerds. 

They sat shoulder to shoulder, Enjolras’s knee pressed against Grantaire’s. He had to fight against sneaking a glance over at Enjolras every five seconds, trying to confirm his practice room epiphany. When he did look over and see Enjolras smiling or laughing at something Courfeyrac had said or singing along to the music playing, all Grantaire could think was, _it’s him. It’s always been him_.

They ran through the whole catalogue of party games: mafia, most likely, paranoia. Jehan was damn good at them, Grantaire had to admit. Because who would possibly expect the guy dressed as Jo March to be the mafia killer? 

But the games got boring, and soon Jehan announced he wanted to dance. There was plenty of room in the basement, so they all pushed aside the bean bags and got up. Jehan, bless his soul, began to play the Mamma Mia soundtrack. 

It was kind of fascinating, watching everyone dance around in old-timey costumes to Honey, Honey. And Grantaire wasn’t going to argue with ABBA, no matter how much he outwardly complained. Cosette had a really good voice, he discovered, when she rocked Mamma Mia out of the fucking park. He was kind of in awe.

And for a while, for about the length of Act 1, Grantaire forgot about all the shitty bits of his life. His dumbass job at the consignment store on Saturdays; his dad, who didn’t think bi people existed. The prom court announcement during homeroom tomorrow. Dating his crush. Fuck, he was going to have to get used to that.

Grantaire had forgotten how awkward it was to be part of a couple. He’d been broken up since January, and now he was thrust back into a relationship. He had forgotten the unseen pressures of proximity, the way he and Enjolras stayed pretty close throughout the night. It would be weird, he figured, for boyfriends to be dancing on opposite sides of the room. And the worst part was that it didn’t even feel that strange. It felt natural, dancing with Enjolras, laughing at their stupid moves. It was only every once in a while that Grantaire felt like he was slingshotted out of his body, watching the party from above, and he realized that Enjolras was belting ABBA in his face and no one was batting an eye. It was like a fucking fever dream.

Just about when Grantaire was starting to get seriously sweaty, Jehan gestured for everyone to take a seat. He turned down the music too, but it was Slipping Through My Fingers, so nobody really cared. “I figured we could take a break from dancing,” he began; everyone nodded appreciatively. “Also, Cosette and Marius have an announcement.”

The couple took the metaphorical stage, aglow with the thrill of having a secret. Grantaire leaned over to Enjolras. “Twenty bucks says they’re getting married,” he whispered.

Enjolras waved him off.

“We know this isn’t really the place to do this,” Marius said, his voice a little quiet, “but we wanted to tell you guys before tomorrow.”

They glanced at each other with the disgustingly sweet look of couples about to announce a pregnancy. Something in Grantaire wanted to laugh. Oh god, was Cosette pregnant? “We’re running for prom court!” Cosette cheered. 

Grantaire’s stomach turned to lead. The room erupted into noise and applause. Grantaire looked away, but not before being unfortunate enough to see Marius kiss Cosette. It was cute, sure, but long and, he believed, wholly inappropriate for the situation. Judging by the whoops from around the room, though, he was the only one who felt that way. He looked over to Enjolras, ready to make a joke about those twenty bucks, only to find his face ashen and horrified, his eyes transfixed on the couple. 

Over the speakers, I Do, I Do, I Do came on. Grantaire thought that was a little much. Marius and Cosette were still kissing.

Jehan turned the music back up and everyone got to their feet, more than eager to start dancing again. Everyone except Enjolras, who looked more than shaken. 

Grantaire left the fray to go get another soda from the snacks table. Jehan had quickly become Grantaire’s favorite friend once he discovered they had Dr. Pepper, so. He was pretty sure his blood would be carbonated by the end of the night. 

“Grantaire?” Came Enjolras’s voice from behind him. He jumped. 

“Jesus,” he said. “Don’t do that.”

Enjolras frowned. “Can I talk to you?”

Grantaire took a sip of his soda. “Yeah. ‘Course.”

“Not here.” Enjolras looked pained saying it. “Come with me.”

Grantaire was about to ask if there was any shady, half-finished stairwell to stand in this time when Enjolras grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him around the corner, pushing open a door to reveal a bedroom. Enjolras’s grip was firm around Grantaire’s wrist like one of those blood pressure things they use at the doctor’s office. Were he in a doctor’s office, though, he would probably get carted into the ER immediately; his pulse was going a mile a minute. Enjolras didn’t seem to notice. “Why is there a bedroom in the basement?”

“It’s a guest bedroom.” Enjolras’s eyes darted around the room before landing just over Grantaire’s shoulder. The walls were blue. “Do…” he winced. “Do you think we’re going to have to kiss at prom?”

“What?”

“If we get on prom court, will we have to kiss?”

“I don’t know.” Grantaire was so sweaty. The suit was cheap and poorly ventilated. He wanted nothing more than to take off his jacket but of all things to do, that was probably the worst idea, given the circumstances. “I think it’s probably smart to play it safe and assume we’ll have to, right?”

Enjolras gnawed at his lip. “Okay.” He took a deep breath. “Because I’ve never kissed anyone, so I’m going to need some practice.” 

He said it so forcefully and quickly that for a moment, Grantaire didn’t even comprehend the words. “What?” His vision went blurry for a split second, and he thought, offhand, what would happen if he fainted right then and there. “ _Practice_?”

“If we have to kiss at prom,” he said, with all the certainty of someone who had seriously thought it over, “I don’t want my first kiss to be in front of everybody. I don’t have a firm grasp of the… mechanics.”

“Oh,” was all Grantaire thought to say. It made sense, to a certain extent. Grantaire wouldn’t want his first kiss to be in front half the school, either. Outside the bedroom (Enjolras had closed the door), Does Your Mother Know started playing. That had always been Grantaire’s favorite song; he would have given anything to be out there, dancing with his friends, not faced with the most spiritually challenging question ever posed to him. “So…”

“So can you kiss me?” Enjolras blurted. 

Grantaire’s brain felt like a creaky old machine, all gummed up with cobwebs. “Sure,” he said.

Which was probably the worst possible answer he could have given. 

For a second they stood there, neither knowing quite what to do. The music was far too infectious for the situation. Grantaire half-debated asking Jehan to replay it once he had left the bedroom, if he ever made it out alive. “Do you want me to, like, count down or something?”

Enjolras nodded frantically. “Sure. Yeah. That’s a good idea.”

“Okay.” Enjolras just stood there, still as a statue, blinking quickly. Biting his lip. He had freckles on his nose, Grantaire realized. Just a few. “Three. Two.” Enjolras was breathing heavily, loud enough for Grantaire to hear. “One.”

And because Enjolras wasn’t moving he stepped forward and- he had never really realized that the few inches Enjolras had on him made such a difference- tilted his head up to press a quick kiss to his lips. 

Grantaire’s stupid crush aside, it objectively wasn’t bad, as first kisses go. Their noses didn’t bump or anything. It was short, barely a second. And maybe Grantaire’s lips were parted a fraction of an inch, but it wasn’t like he slobbered on him or anything. The only thing was that kissing Enjolras was like kissing a brick wall. Grantaire didn’t believe in, like, fireworks when he kissed someone, but he expected _something_ , something more than just lips and spit. 

Nonetheless, Enjolras stepped back, his face burning. “Ew,” he blurted, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, “gross.”

It felt like a pike had been shoved through Grantaire’s chest. Any fledgling dreams, his day-old crush, were ground, in that second, beneath Enjolras’s heel into the tasteful grey carpeting of Jehan’s guest bedroom. 

To his credit, Enjolras did look immediately mortified. “Wow,” Grantaire said, because it was the only thing he could think of. “Never gotten that one before.”

And Enjolras did laugh, a little, but his face was red as a tomato and he still looked like he had pushed someone into the Grand Canyon by accident. “I’m- I just- I’m so sorry. It just slipped out.” 

It had felt like they had spent a million years in that goddamn bedroom, but when Grantaire snapped back to reality he realized that they had barely gotten to the first chorus of the song. 

They stood there, again, just staring, lost in their own chaos of thought, as the music for the dance break interlude played outside. 

“Can you do it again?” 

A second wave of that going-to-faint feeling. “I’m sorry?”

“I feel like that one was bad.” Enjolras looked sheepish. 

“It wasn’t,” Grantaire said, stupidly. “You kind of ruined it at the end, though.”

“I’m sorry!”

“It’s fine. I can…” he really didn’t want to say it. “Give you some pointers?”

“Okay,” Enjolras mumbled. “Yeah. That’s smart.”

It was unsettling, seeing him so unsure. Grantaire hated that he loved being the one who knew things, not just clutching Enjolras’s coattails. “You- you have to, you know, get into it.” He winced at the phrasing. So did Enjolras. “You can’t just stand there and _be_ kissed. You have to kiss back.”

“Right.” 

“Yeah.” 

“Can we…” Enjolras reached up to scratch his head. He hadn’t stopped moving, fidgeting, since they had entered the room. “Can we try again?”

At this point, Grantaire had lost all sense of self-preservation. It wasn’t anything romantic, he assured himself. It was all for the act, a learning opportunity for Enjolras. He was just offering a service. Which, once he thought about it, made him sound like he was a prostitute or something. So not that. “Yeah. Sure.”

He was about to count down again when Enjolras stepped forward and kissed _him_. For a second Grantaire was in Enjolras’s place, frozen in shock. He inched forward, erasing the space between their bodies; it was more natural that way, he told himself. That was the only reason. Enjolras was learning fast because even before Grantaire thought that it was weird for them to just be standing there, stock-still like department store mannequins, he lifted his hands to cup the sides of Grantaire’s face. Enjolras’s pinky was dangerously close to brushing against his pulse point, where he would absolutely be able to feel his heart beating like an entire drumline. His hands were a cold shock against the heat of his cheeks and Grantaire, not one to be outdone, placed his hands on Enjolras’s waist.

The worst thing was that it felt natural. It wasn’t like the first kiss, awkward and forceful. Enjolras’s hands on his face felt like they belonged there. His lips tasted like dried blood and Sprite. 

It was another short kiss, as kisses went, but it felt like a year had passed before Enjolras pulled away. “Was that better?” He asked, red hives blooming on his neck. “Were the hands- it seemed like the right thing to do. I’ve seen in movies, they, you know…” He trailed off, gesturing vaguely with his hands, eyes fixed on the bland painting of the ocean hung over the guest bed.

“The hands were fine,” Grantaire answered eventually. Once he had gotten his brain back in order. 

“Good.”

Something about the whole scene suddenly struck Grantaire as funny, the kind of absurdist humor that he and Eponine laughed at when they were high. “Look at this,” he said with a snort. “Gatsby and Ishmael kissing.”

Enjolras huffed out a short chuckle. “It’s like a bad fanfiction.”

“Should we go back?” Grantaire said. “They’ll probably notice if we’re gone for too long.”

Enjolras nodded. “Yeah.” Grantaire turned to go. Enjolras stopped him, putting a hand on his arm, the touch searing into his skin. “Thank you.”

“That’s what boyfriends are for,” he quipped. Neither of them laughed.

Nobody noticed their absence. If they did, they didn’t mention it.

They were able to slip back into the fray easily enough, given that Jehan was dramatically reciting the dialogue, word perfect, along with the music. 

When I Have A Dream came on, Jehan demanded that they all sing. So everyone arranged into a circle and sang along, messy and pitchy as it was. Grantaire didn’t quite know the words, so he mumbled along and let the rest of them make up for him. 

Combeferre, to Grantaire’s left, put an arm around his shoulder. Enjolras, on his right, wrapped an arm around his waist. Grantaire looked over and Enjolras, face still red, returned his glance. If his heart beat any faster, he would go into cardiac arrest. But it didn’t. He felt happy, for some reason. Despite all the shit in his life, all the shit that had happened in the past fifteen minutes, he smiled. He swayed along with the rest of them and fumbled along with the melody. 

It didn’t help that Enjolras kept looking at him. 

_I believe in angels_ , he would sing, turning his head ever so slightly to make eye contact with Grantaire with a wide smile on his face and something unknowable in his expression, _something good in everything I see_.

He let himself imagine, for a second or two, that it was real. That they were two teenagers in love who had snuck away to make out for real. That life was like a movie where crazy, exciting adventures happened. That the whole fake dating thing was fun, not a living hell. That Enjolras liked him back.

For a moment he felt like crying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so enjolras's first kiss was almost word for word my first kiss except it was in the girl's dressing room and grantaire was the sam to my donna during a performance of mamma mia in which i was Wigging Out about the wedding scene. yes i told him it was gross. sorry kenneth.
> 
> tell me about your first kiss in the comments!!


	5. A Comforting Return to Normalcy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With prom comes planning. Lots of planning.

Friday morning was when the announcement for prom court would be made. It was to be during homeroom, after attendance, the pledge of allegiance, and the student news.

Truth be told, Grantaire had forgotten. He sat in his usual seat with his earbuds in, ignoring everything around him. The teacher had long given up on making him stand for the pledge.

He didn’t even notice something was up until the girl who sat next to him, Abigail 2 (there were three Abigails in his homeroom, so he had numbered them all for convenience; he couldn’t be bothered to learn their last names), prodded his arm with her sharp fingernail and pointed up to the loudspeaker, mouthing, ‘prom.’

Grantaire took out one earbud just to hear the tail end of their class president reading, “and James Grantaire. Congratulations to all who were chosen, and good luck!”

Abigail 2 looked at him like she had never before. Granted, she had never really looked at him at all, but Grantaire was willing to believe he had grown a second head judging by her expression. 

“Did I get in?” He asked.

She nodded, eyes wide. “You’re dating _Enjolras_?”

Grantaire shrugged. “Yeah.”

“I didn’t know you were gay,” she said, cocking her head to the side and analyzing him like a particularly fascinating specimen.

 _Bi, actually_ , he debated saying, but he knew it would be lost on her. “Yeah.”

“Damn,” she murmured. “Jess Berger has been in love with you, like, all year.”

Jessica Berger was in his math class. She was kind of cute, if a little basic, and she helped him with his homework. 

“Oh,” was all he could think of to say.

She shook her head and looked back down at her phone. “I can’t believe you’re dating _Enjolras_.” She said the name as if it were something unthinkable, like Grantaire was dating the king of Mars.

Grantaire felt a twinge of irrational anger on behalf of Enjolras, who wasn’t even his real boyfriend. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” she said, shrugging loosely. “He’s in my AP Psych class. He’s, like, crazy.” 

“He’s my _boyfriend_ ,” Grantaire pushed back. It felt strange to call him that, especially to someone outside of his immediate circle of friends. It was goddamn Abigail 2 from homeroom; not even Abigail 1. And it felt even stranger to be defending Enjolras.

Abigail 2 looked up with a guilty kind of look on her face, as if just realizing what she had said. “Oh. Sorry.”

Grantaire huffed and put his earbud back in. “Yeah.”

~

“So, congratulations!” Cosette greeted him at lunch. 

“Yeah,” Grantaire responded weakly, climbing up to his (now permanent, how did that happen?) spot next at the top of the bleachers. “Should I be congratulating you, too?”

“Yes!” She said, a little confused. “Didn’t you hear the announcements?”

“Just the end,” he explained. “I guess I was lucky we were announced last, huh?”

Cosette laughed gently. That was one thing Grantaire liked about her. She always laughed at his jokes, even if they weren’t really jokes at all.

Enjolras wasn’t there yet. It struck Grantaire as strange, since he brought his lunch from home, so he had no lunch line to get stuck in. Nobody else pointed it out.

Courfeyrac was talking about the school play coming up. It was, from what Grantaire could gather, some weird collection of one-acts about… he didn’t know what, really. But Courfeyrac had a monologue from Hamlet that he had to memorize and he was complaining about how of _course_ it couldn’t have been easy and been in iambic pentameter, he had to get saddled with a monologue all in prose. 

Then Jehan was shouting for him to recite it and Courfeyrac had never been one to back down from a performance opportunity. “I have of late,” he began, chewing the scenery for the sake of his friends, “but _wherefore_ I know not…”

“What did I miss?” Said a voice by Grantaire’s ear. It was soft, but it startled him nonetheless. 

Enjolras took his seat. He had come up the other side of the bleachers, unseen by Grantaire, who had been focused on Courfeyrac. He finished the monologue and everyone clapped politely.

“Sorry I’m late,” Enjolras said a little louder, sounding vaguely out of breath. “I had to get permission to put up posters from Mr. Gallagher.”

“Already?” Marius cut in. “I was going to get mine after school.”

Enjolras took a long drink of water. “I figured a lot of people would and I wanted to beat the crowd. But,” he fished a small pink slip out of his pocket, reminiscent of the neon orange hall passes, “I got it!”

“I’m sorry,” Grantaire said. “What is this about?”

Enjolras looked at him like he was an idiot, which was a comforting return to normalcy. “For the prom campaign?”

“Oh. Are we actually,” he mumbled conspiratorially, “doing that?”

Enjolras scoffed. “Why wouldn’t we?”

“I mean, you hardly signed up for this.”

“I’m sure I’ve already told you, Grantaire, I don’t half-ass things.” He began to lay out his lunch on the space of the bleacher next to him. “We were voted in by student council, which means we have a decent shot at the crown.”

Grantaire rolled his eyes. “No we don’t.”

“Think about it,” Enjolras said, jabbing the air with a baby carrot. “Nineteen couples applied to be on prom court but only four were chosen. And of those nineteen, only one couple was eliminated from the election because of academic issues.”

“Okay?”

“We were chosen over fourteen other couples. Now we only have to beat out three.” Enjolras bit his carrot in half with the same ferocity, the same intensity that was in his eyes. “We have good odds. If we campaign right, I think we could easily win prom kings.”

“You guys are so cute,” Cosette interrupted, “but we’re still going to crush you in the election.”

Enjolras grinned. “I’d like to see you try.”

~

What surprised Grantaire the most was the fact that his life changed extremely little. Teachers would congratulate him at the beginning of class, but other than that, it wasn’t like his daily routine was disrupted.

The people at school weren’t homophobic or anything, and nobody, like, threatened him. But ever since his conversation with Abigail 2 in homeroom he had become ultra-aware of the eyes of his classmates on him. In the hallway, in classes, washing his hands in the bathroom. 

He was standing at the water fountain, waiting for the kid in front of him to finish filling his water bottle. The kid pulled his bottle away just before it overflowed, sipping a little from off the top before screwing on the lid. Grantaire moved forward.

“Hey,” the kid said. Grantaire looked up. “I saw your promosal on Instagram.”

“Oh.” He knew it was only a matter of time before the video really started spreading around, and now some pimply underclassman was talking about it at the water fountain. This was the one thing he _didn’t_ want, and it wouldn’t have happened if Enjolras had just listened. “Yeah. Well, it was really my boyfriend’s idea…” It would never feel weird to call Enjolras his boyfriend. Somewhere, across the school, was he calling Grantaire the same? 

“It was cute,” the underclassman said. 

“Thanks, kid.”

“I’m a sophomore-” Grantaire fucking knew it- “but I just wanted to say that when I’m a senior, my boyfriend and me are going to run for prom court. We didn’t want to be the first, but now that you guys are doing it, we can too.”

It felt like someone had thrust a dagger into Grantaire’s belly. It was wonderful, it was objectively amazing, to have little baby gays look up to you because _you_ cleared the path for them. In another life, Grantaire would’ve been thrilled. He would have immediately told Enjolras and Enjolras would wear it on his sleeve that his actions were really making a difference, even at the high school level. But it wasn’t that world. It was 1:22 on a Friday at the water fountain in the language hallway and it was all a giant lie. Grantaire wanted to tell the kid, tell him that he was faking it, that he wasn’t clearing the path for jack shit, but he looked so hopeful and he had a rainbow flag sticker on his water bottle and Grantaire realized he hadn’t said anything yet. “My boyfriend and I,” he corrected.

The kid laughed nervously. “Right. My boyfriend and I. Thanks.” He ran off, scurrying down the hall, limbs lanky and one untied shoe trailing laces behind him on the linoleum floor.

Grantaire returned to class.

~

He had history last period. With Enjolras.

He was talking to the teacher when Grantaire came in, so he just took his normal seat, busying himself getting his materials out of his backpack. Notebook, pencil, pen, history binder. Water bottle. 

Enjolras’s hand came down, flat, on Grantaire’s desk. “Hey, Apollo,” he said, trying desperately to play it cool. “What’s up?”

Enjolras’s fingers were splayed out on top of Grantaire’s notebook. They were spindly and long; pianist’s hands. “Not much.” His hip knocked the desk. “Can I talk to you after school?”

Of all things to do, staying after school on a Friday probably marked the very bottom of Grantaire’s list. “Of course. Why?”

People were looking at them. Half the class was watching their exchange, the way Grantaire was looking up at Enjolras, a little terrified, like he was threatening to kill his dog. Enjolras must have noticed the attention too, because he shifted to sit _on_ the desk, hip resting just so. Grantaire forced himself not to watch the movement. “I want to go over planning for the campaign. Can we meet in the library?”

“What if someone hears us and steals our ideas?” Grantaire teased.

Enjolras, bless his heart, nodded thoughtfully. “How about your lunch table?” 

“Okay.”

The teacher was booting up his slideshow. Enjolras looked at the clock and then back again. “Remind me to call my Aunt Kathy this afternoon,” he said.

The beating of Grantaire’s heart shifted into overdrive. Of all the things Enjolras could do, what would he feel the need to use their top-secret spy code word for? And in front of their history class, of all things. It wasn’t likely he was going to start stripping or some shit. That wasn’t Enjolras. But since the party… Enjolras could kiss him. He could do that. And Grantaire wouldn’t be able to do anything, wouldn’t want to. Everyone in class would see and they would be kissing, lips and spit and hands on hips and-

Enjolras reached out and took Grantaire’s hand.

Oh.

He tangled their fingers together, those long pianist fingers that Grantaire hadn’t noticed until a minute ago. Enjolras’s hand was cold, colder than the rest of the world. And it felt like it always did when Enjolras touched him, like the first drop on a rollercoaster, before your nerves acclimated to the frantic movement. People were looking at them and talking, maybe about them, maybe about something else, but Grantaire could feel their eyes on his neck. 

Enjolras gave his hand a quick squeeze and pulled away, getting up to return to his own desk. Grantaire watched him go.

They were learning about the Vietnam War. 

Across the room, Enjolras followed the lecture intently. Grantaire watched as his head bobbed up and down, up at the projector and back to his notes. 

It was safe to say that when the bell rang at 2:35, Grantaire didn’t know jack shit about the Vietnam War. 

He had to stop by the bathroom to pee after class, so by the time he got to his table Enjolras was already there, that same notebook he had recorded their plan in open before him. 

“Afternoon, captain,” Grantaire greeted.

Enjolras just looked up and frowned. “Where were you?”

“Peeing?” Enjolras made some kind of condescending expression that Grantaire couldn’t really parse, but that was the way it was with him, wasn’t it? No matter what, Enjolras always assumed the worst of him. That was- there were lots of things Enjolras did that pissed him off, and that was the most infuriating. The lack of trust, the lack of _respect_. “Dude. I could be at home eating chips and watching TV right now, but I’m not. So the least you can do is give me the benefit of the doubt, okay?” He was surprised by the sharpness of his own tone.

“I’m not-” Enjolras dropped his pencil on the ground and fumbled to pick it up. “Okay. Yeah, okay.”

Grantaire took a seat. It wasn’t that different sitting there after school as opposed to during lunch. A table was a table. But the bleachers where the ABC sat were empty and the football team was practicing on the field a scant fifty feet from where they sat. 

Enjolras opened the notebook, his pencil hovering over the lined paper. “So here’s where we’re at with the campaign. I’ve got the pass to put up posters and I was thinking that we could get Combeferre to use the music printer- he’s got an in because he’s in symphonic band- to print posters for us.”

“Why?” 

“If we get Combeferre to do it, we can print as much as we want for free. The other kids will have to pay by the page if they print at the library.” Enjolras grinned, the kind of smile that meant victory.

“I mean, they all probably have color printers at home.” Grantaire pointed out. “Daddy’s money.”

Enjolras tapped the air with the eraser end of his pencil; he always did that, in meetings and debate tournaments, when he found a hole in someone’s argument. If you saw Enjolras’s eraser moving, it meant you were finished. “Not if they want big posters, they don’t. They can print normal size papers, but if they want poster-sized posters, they have to print at the library. Now, if we use the music printer, we don’t technically get the right kind of paper, but we can use the sheet music paper and that’ll be about-” he opened his notebook flat and held it up in front of him, the spiral ring parallel to the table, “this big.”

“Oh,” Grantaire said, trying to imagine Enjolras’s hovering notebook as a poster. “That’s good. That’s big.”

Enjolras set down his notebook with a shrug, trying in vain to conceal the smug smile fighting its way onto his face. “And all I have to do is peer edit Ferre’s lab report, so it’s a solid deal.”

“What are we going to put on the posters?” Grantaire asked. 

Enjolras looked a little sheepish. “Would you be willing to design them? I know you took that class last semester, the computer arts thing, the…” he grappled for the name.

“Intro to Graphic Design?” Grantaire supplied.

“Yes!” Enjolras said. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to, I have an app on my phone that could work if you can’t do it.”

“I’ll do it,” Grantaire offered, even if only to never have to see what kind of monstrosities Enjolras would make with his app. Enjolras was anything but artistically talented.

“Great.” In the notebook, under a heading titled CAMPAIGN PLANS,’ Enjolras wrote, ‘G to do posters.’ Had Enjolras always written his name as ‘G?’ “Now we need a contrast.”

“A contrast?”

“I did some research last night on how to win a political campaign and it said we needed to create a contrast between us and the other contestants,” Enjolras explained. “We need to give people a reason to vote for us, make us stick in their heads.”

Grantaire frowned. “This isn’t a political campaign, though. We’re running for prom king.”

“Well, forgive me for thinking that there might actually be some good information on a professional level,” Enjolras retorted. “And since we’re not into the whole ‘bake cupcakes for your class’ thing, I figured winpromqueen.com wouldn’t be much help.”

“I mean, people do like free food.”

“I heard through the grapevine-” what an Enjolras thing to say- “that Lila Han is already planning on giving out cookies.”

“Oh.”

“So, like I was saying; we need something to set us apart from the competition.” Enjolras tapped his pencil against the notebook. 

“Well, isn’t it obvious?” Grantaire offered. “We’re two guys. That seems kind of important.”

Enjolras seemed to mull it over and shook his head. “It’s too obvious, that’s the problem. We need something to get to the people who aren’t going to vote for us purely because we’re gay. I ran some numbers- there are 1,628 students at Riverside High. There are four couples, which means that if every candidate gets an equal number of votes they get 407 votes each. So we need to get more than 407 votes. Which- for comparison- is only six less than the size of the entire freshman class.”

“That’s a lot,” Grantaire said stupidly. 

“Yeah.” Enjolras ran a hand through his hair. Grantaire forced himself to look away. “There are eleven of us in the ABC but we can’t count on that due to the whole Marius-Cosette thing. We _can_ probably depend on the AGSA vote and a good chunk of the theater and music department vote, but that only brings us up to about 80 votes, maybe 100 if we’re lucky..”

“That’s not good,” Grantaire said; there was, after all, a reason he was failing calculus.

“If we market ourselves, though, we can get more votes. In a way, we have a leg up. This is the same thing the other couples are doing, we just have that dependable voter bloc.” Enjolras put down his pencil and folded his hands in front of him. “So. What’s our ‘thing?’”

Grantaire couldn’t help but think this was all a waste of time. It was prom. To a certain extent, there wasn’t anything you could change. People would just vote for whoever they thought was coolest or who played the same sport as them or just vote at random. Then, whoever got prom king and queen would live it up for one night and that was it. It was just like a real monarchy, he thought vaguely. The rulers don’t actually do anything. It’s all in the hands of parliament. Or, in the case of high school, student council.

“Wait,” he blurted. Enjolras looked up. “What if we made it, like, a political party?”

Enjolras chewed on his lip. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Grantaire continued, the words forming on his tongue as he spoke, “if we didn’t portray it as running for king and stuff. If we pretend it’s a new political party and you’re going to be prom president or something.”

Enjolras thought about it for a few seconds, his eyes darting about just past Grantaire’s head. “That’s actually a pretty good idea. It’s unusual.”

“So instead of posters that say, ‘vote for prom king,’ it would be like ‘vote for whatever party,’ you know?”

He nodded rapidly, a grin pulling at the corners of his mouth. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. What would our party be called?”

“The Monarchist party,” Grantaire said without thinking.

And Enjolras laughed, that wonderful laugh. He genuinely threw his head back in laughter, revealing to the world the porcelain expanse of his neck. There was a mole by his collarbone. “I love it.”

 _He loves it_ , Grantaire thought. _He loves you_ , the annoying part of his brain said. “Okay. We’re running as the Monarchist party candidates.” 

“We need an animal,” Enjolras blurted. “Like the Democratic donkey, the Republican elephant…”

“A cow,” Grantaire suggested, half-joking. “Hardworking, trustworthy, all that.”

Enjolras laughed again, just a little chuckle. “Okay. We’ll have a cow.”

“If we win, you have to wear a cow costume,” Grantaire said.

Enjolras shook his head, his hair moving with it. “You can wear the cow costume.”

Grantaire smirked. “You’re going to wish you never said that.”

“Our platform can be like a break from the ordinary,” Enjolras said, the idea picking up steam in that pretty head of his. “‘Are you tired of the old ways? Vote Monarchist.’ Voters who feel disillusioned with the historic prom king and queen stereotypes and traditions can vote for us instead.”

 _I think you’re taking this a little too seriously_ , Grantaire almost said, but he stopped himself. Enjolras always took everything too seriously. If he pointed that out now they would just start fighting and they had just started to agree on something for once. “Yeah.”

Enjolras started to write it all down, a scrawled list all the way down the page. He had crooked, spindly handwriting that slanted the more he wrote. He mumbled as the words appeared, his lips barely parted, his voice barely audible. “Okay,” he said, putting down the pencil with a flourish. “Okay. I think we’re good for today. Could you start drafting some posters? I want them up ASAP. I’ll send you a picture of these notes so you have ideas.”

Grantaire nodded. “Yeah, cool.”

He got up, shoved the notebook back in his backpack. “Thank you, Grantaire.” 

“Can I ask-” Enjolras’s head whipped up to look at Grantaire far too quickly- “who are the other couples? I missed the announcement.”

Enjolras nodded. “It’s Marius and Cosette, obviously, Lila Han and Ben Ward, and Caroline Miur and Mark Scherer,” he listed, ticking off the couples on his fingers.

“Fuck,” Grantaire said.

“What?”

He laughed involuntarily, a frantic, giddy thing. “Caroline Miur’s my ex and Mark Scherer used to bully me in elementary school.”

“Oh.” Enjolras frowned. “Is that going to be a problem?”

“No,” Grantaire shook his head and huffed out another manic laugh. “It just means we’re going to win this fucking thing or die trying.”

Enjolras grinned. “That’s my boy,” he quipped, his eyes glinting with irony. “See you Monday.”

He hooked his thumbs under the straps of his backpack and was off, growing smaller and smaller as he walked across the baseball diamond and into the distance. 

Grantaire watched him go, the sun nearly blinding him. Enjolras crested the hill that kids sledded down in the winter and disappeared; Grantaire turned away to leave. Of all people to have a crush on, he thought, maybe Enjolras wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe it would be nice to spend time with him, see him smile and laugh and get excited about little things. 

Either that or Grantaire would regret this big-time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey y'all? please ignore the fact that they're seniors and taking APUSH thank you  
> also ignore the fact that when enjolras said he "ran some numbers" he literally just divided 1600 by four
> 
> please comment about any other stupid shit i've done!! or good things i've done, that's cool too


	6. A Strange Expectant Look

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A study sesh and some traditions.

Grantaire spent the weekend drafting political campaign posters, which was a sentence he never expected to say in his life. Enjolras had sent him a whole array of vintage campaign posters from the 50s and 60s, the kind with big segments of red, white, and blue and blocky letters. Grantaire found himself drawn to the Kennedy posters. They were good. Simple, bold, eye-catching. He knew intuitively that none of the other contestants would have any skill making their own posters and would likely be crammed with colorful fonts and clip art; an absolute disaster to look at. So Grantaire saved the Kennedy ones onto his computer and went about keeping it simple. 

His first poster looked like shit. It was simple but too plain, just chunky text and a flavorless design. What he needed was a good picture to go in the center- like Kennedy’s face in the forefront, just… not Kennedy. And not Grantaire, either. It had to be Enjolras.

Musichetta had made an Instagram account for the ABC a long time ago. She firmly believed that they needed an online presence, Enjolras disagreed, and she went ahead and did it anyway. Candid pictures of them all in meetings, promotional stuff for events, that kind of thing. 

Grantaire absently scrolled through, looking for one clear picture where Enjolras wasn’t blurry from motion or mid-word, his face distorted with emotion. 

There. At the bottom.

It was from the walkout, when they had all gathered on the football field and Enjolras had taken up a handheld mic and asked the crowd in that powerful, demanding voice why they were still dealing with this depravity, this oppression as their generation was striding towards the future. Everyone had cheered along and in the valley of each pause his breath was overshadowed by thundering voices of the student body. Grantaire had been in the back; it was probably the first time since the administration had temporarily banned iced coffee that the whole school agreed on something. And he knew they didn’t care, he had heard half of them spouting off slurs in the hallway just the day before, but something about Enjolras’s passion was infectious.

The picture was, apparently, taken in the middle of that speech. One of Enjolras’s hands was gripping the microphone, the muscles straining, and the other was thrust in the air, a fist punching up toward the heavens. Unlike the other pictures on the Instagram, where he was caught unflatteringly mid-word, this one was taken on one of the rare occasions when his mouth was still, a triumphant smile gracing his face.

Grantaire grinned. Enjolras would hate him for this, he realized. But, he thought, cutting and pasting Enjolras’s shape from the picture, it just might win them the election.

“These are good,” Enjolras said over the phone Sunday night. “Really good. Kennedy, right?”

“Why thank you,” Grantaire responded, a little overdramatic to cover the swell of pride that bloomed in his stomach. “I was indeed inspired by one John F.”

Enjolras made a small hum of disapproval. “One question, though.”

“Shoot.”

“Why just me?” There was rustling on Enjolras’s end. In the distance there came a clanging of pots and pans. “Shouldn’t it be the two of us?”

“You’re going to be the president of the Monarchist party,” Grantaire explained. He was lying flat on his back on his bed, his phone pressed to his ear. The screen was hot against his skin. He had never called Enjolras before, and certainly not on a weekend. “I’ll be the first lady.”

“First man,” Enjolras corrected. “But we’re running as a couple. This shouldn’t be a me thing.”

“It won’t be,” Grantaire ceded. “There just aren’t any flattering pictures of me. And this one- this one screams revolution.”

Enjolras was silent for a second. “Yeah.” 

Grantaire lifted his arm above him, watched his fingers wiggle in the air. He wondered if he could get away with painting his nails. His toenails, definitely, but he didn’t have any polish. Maybe Eponine could come over and they could have a nail-painting party. “I really appreciate you calling to go over the posters, but, uh… if you don’t have anything to talk about, you can go. I won’t keep you.” 

“I’m not busy,” Enjolras said.

“Okay.”

There was a long silence. Grantaire traced the ugly scalloping on his ceiling with his eyes. Enjolras huffed out a breath. “Are you ready for the rally?”

‘The rally’ was a stupid campaigning tradition that the prom court always did. They all gathered in the cafeteria on a school night and each contestant had a table to deck out however they wanted. The idea was to have an easy way to campaign to the whole school all at once, but it usually came down to whoever baked the best cookies to hand out. It was on Thursday and Enjolras, who had taken to calling it ‘the rally,’ had promised to make lemon bars. 

Grantaire shrugged out of habit before realizing that Enjolras couldn’t see him. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Do you think it’ll be a problem that we don’t have buttons to hand out?” Enjolras said, his voice a little strained. 

“I think the button thing is a stereotype,” Grantaire assured him. “Hey, how are we getting there?”

A pause. “What do you mean?”

“We should come together, right? It would be a little weird if we each came in our own cars. I think.”

“Good point,” Enjolras mused. “Can you drive me?”

“‘Course.” 

“Then it’s all decided.” 

Grantaire didn’t want to be on the phone any longer. This was a conversation that could _clearly_ be had over text, where there were no stilted pauses and he had something to look at other than his own ceiling. In another lifetime he would have loved to call Enjolras on a Sunday night. Talk about nothing in particular, revel in each other’s company, even if just through the phone. But this, like everything between them, was awful and awkward and fake. He was saved, though, by someone far away in Enjolras’s house calling out to him, something that Grantaire couldn’t quite make out over the phone.

“My mom just called me down to dinner,” Enjolras said. 

“I should eat too,” Grantaire responded, just to make it a little less awkward. “See you tomorrow.”

“See you.” And with a soft click, Enjolras was gone.

Grantaire examined his hand once more. If he were to paint his nails, what color would he choose?

Red, he decided. A nice red would do the trick.

~

Something had changed between them. 

Grantaire didn’t quite know what, but it had happened. They had been fake-dating for what, two weeks? Hardly any time at all, in the grand scheme of things. Hell, there were still five weeks until prom. May 31. May 31. May 31.

He had it circled in his calendar. It felt horribly juvenile, like a little girl putting a heart around Valentine’s Day, but he needed to make sure he didn’t forget, because that was absolutely something he would do.

Somehow, though, those two weeks had done something. Grantaire couldn’t remember the last fight he had with Enjolras. Well, the last real one. They’d had plenty of little spats, impassioned debates in meetings about the future of the Democratic party (Enjolras thought it would drift left, Grantaire thought it was steadily becoming more centrist). But it had never gotten bad, not like it used to. When things got too heated Enjolras would close his eyes and press his fingers to his temples and mumble, “just _stop_ , Grantaire.”

And he would.

Enjolras hadn’t moved to sit next to him in history (which he was pretty sure was because Grantaire had the shittiest seat in class if you wanted to look at the projector- the angles were all wrong), but he did often crane his neck to look back at him during class with a strange expectant look on his face, almost like he thought Grantaire wouldn’t be there when he turned and instead there would just be an empty desk under the poster of Abraham Lincoln, the seat still warm from a ghost recently departed.

And now they were here, in the library, in a school-sponsored study session before midterm and Enjolras had chosen to sit with _him_ instead of with Combeferre and Courfeyrac over by the printers. It was just the two of them at one of those little round tables and every time Enjolras shifted his legs their knees would bump together. Enjolras worked calmly, typing away on his laptop with an even expression. 

Grantaire was not having such luck. The outline of the senior research paper was due at midnight and he had no clue where to start. He had the basics down but it was, overall, bad. He flipped through his notes, looking for a quote that would inspire him or some shit. No dice.

“This is impossible,” he mumbled, burying his face in his hands.

Enjolras looked up from his computer. “What is?”

“This outline,” Grantaire said, gesturing to the scattered materials on the table before him. “I feel like my insights aren’t good.”

Enjolras nodded. “Same. I feel like I’m just explaining my quotes, you know?” He leaned back in his chair, twisting his head until his neck cracked. “What’s your paper on?”

Grantaire showed him the book. “Carrie.”

“Yeah, but what’s it on? What’s your thesis?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t want to be boring and write about religion and femininity and stuff so I decided to write about the gaze of society and how it affects people, but…” he glanced back down at his outline. The more he looked at it the worse it seemed. “I think I might’ve thesis-ed myself into a corner.” 

“Well, let’s think about it.” Grantaire could tell he had made a mistake because Enjolras leaned forward, his fingers tented before him, that gleeful glint in his eyes that he recognized from that time their class had gone to an escape room in eighth grade. “It’s a horror novel, so-”

Grantaire snorted involuntarily. “It’s hardly horror.”

Enjolras raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“It’s a tragedy,” Grantaire explained. “It’s a story about the mass death of hundreds of people. And the ending- where they talk about the graduation and there’s only, like, fifty people left and the valedictorian starts fucking crying in the middle of his speech- it’s fucking heartbreaking.”

Enjolras poked his cheek with the eraser of his pencil absently. “And how does society handle that?”

“They don’t. Carrie’s treated like a-a scientific specimen and the other kids are demonized for their part in things. Nobody acknowledges the tragedy that happened.” 

“There you go!” Enjolras’s pencil eraser tapped the air. Grantaire couldn’t help but feel a little reassured at the sight. “Talk about the way society desensitizes the prom tragedy. Connect it to the way the media talks about mass shootings.” 

“Oh,” Grantaire mumbled. “That’s good.” He looked down at his notes. He could definitely work with that. It was fresh, it was insightful… “thank you.”

Enjolras’s knee bumped his again, but Grantaire got the feeling that it wasn’t an accident. “You’re very welcome. Now can you help me study for the history test? I made flashcards.”

“Yeah.” Grantaire closed his laptop. “Fair warning, I don’t know _shit_ about the Gilded Age.”

“I know,” Enjolras said, shuffling the flashcards with an easy, satisfied grin on his face. “I made extra just for that.” 

~

There was a tradition that their school had for prom court. It was one of the many stupid traditions different groups had: the theater kids said that if you didn’t write your name and dream role on the ceiling of the music room before the end of sophomore year you were destined to never get a lead. 

There was a wall outside of the grade-level offices that had been the site of the tradition since the 80s. Once you were nominated for prom court, all the contestants were given a day after school to go and put a handprint on the wall, one more link in the chain of kings and queens that had been growing for decades. Boys painted their hands blue and girls pink; it was the kind of ridiculous heteronormativity that Grantaire snorted at every time he passed, but now he was walking back towards the grade-level offices from the art supply closet with a can of paint in each hand. 

Everyone else was already there when Grantaire arrived. Lila Han had gotten a couple of paintbrushes and they all stood around for a second, trying to figure out how to open the cans.

“Does anyone have a screwdriver?” Marius asked weakly.

“Oh!” Grantaire took off his backpack, digging in the little pocket in the front. It was really a gold mine in there, he realized. A pack of gum, the house key he had lost a month ago, some kind of keychain in the shape of a pig. “My swiss army knife has a screwdriver.”

Cosette clapped a little before realizing nobody else would join in. 

Grantaire popped the lids of the cans with his flathead screwdriver, sitting back on his heels with a satisfied grin. “There we go.”

“Why do you have a screwdriver?” 

It was funny. Grantaire hadn’t even noticed Enjolras’s absence.

He turned, falling on his ass in the process. No bother. “It’s my swiss army knife. See?”

Enjolras’s eyes were trained on Grantaire’s shoes, not on the swiss army knife Grantaire was helpfully brandishing in front of him. “No, I see it. You know you’re not supposed to have that on school grounds, right?” 

“I’ll put it away. Jeez.” Grantaire rolled his eyes. “Not like I’m going to stab anybody with a two-inch blade.”

“Let’s start!” Cosette broke in. 

There were only a couple of paint brushes, so they all had to take turns. Grantaire sat on the ground by the paint, watching Caroline and Mark paint their hands pink and blue respectively.

Pink and blue was just so _predictable _. Grantaire looked up the wall, the seemingly endless pattern of hands. Names and graduation years written in the middle. The winners got little golden crowns painted on their prints; it was kind of funny to see the wildly differing quality between the years. There, up at the top, was the first prom king and queen to put their hands on the wall. Jason Bryant and Jenny Andrews, class of ‘84. That was probably why they had won, Grantaire mused. Two J names.__

__“Hey,” Enjolras said. He was leaning against the lockers on the opposite side of the hallway, phone in hand. For someone so invested in the prom campaign process, he seemed utterly apathetic towards the whole handprint tradition. Grantaire liked it, even if just for the prospect of getting to paint himself. He had been the kind of kid in elementary school to put glue on his hand just to peel it off. “I need to go ask my chem teacher something, is it cool if I come back? I’ll only be a few minutes.”_ _

__Grantaire nodded. It wasn’t like they were doing anything, anyway. He wouldn’t miss Enjolras’s presence. “That’s fine.”_ _

__The prom royals from 1985 were Mark Corey and Beth Taylor. Maybe people named Mark had an advantage, there certainly were a noticeable number of them up on the wall._ _

__Mark had bullied him in elementary school. Not anything serious, just… he was a weird kid and he kind of deserved it. He was really into Harry Potter and he used to come to school wearing one of those cheap Hogwarts robes. One time he brought a ‘wand’ with him to class (it was really just a stick he had sanded down by rubbing it against the pavement) and Mark had snapped it. Not even in front of him; he had left to go to the bathroom and when he came back it was lying on his desk in two. Mark, who sat next to him, couldn’t contain his laughter and ended up pissing his pants. Which, thinking back, would’ve been really fucking funny if baby Grantaire hadn’t been so fucked up about his wand being broken._ _

__And now Mark was standing up in front of the wall, pressing his hand to the tile and grinning at Caroline, who had told Grantaire she felt like she ‘couldn’t trust him anymore’ after he came out as bi. When worlds collide, huh?_ _

__As much as Grantaire still thought Enjolras was an ass ( _he wasn’t an ass two days ago in the library_ he thought, _when he made extra flashcards on the Gilded Age because he knew you bombed that unit_ ) he wished he was there with him. Someone to talk to who wasn’t busy talking to their own lovebird. Laugh about how there were two Rileys in prom court in 1997, together in a couple, who probably ran on the shtick that they had the same name and probably lost because people thought they were two boys._ _

__In maybe ten minutes, tops, Grantaire was going to stand up there in front of all of those names and put his own blue handprint up next to Enjolras’s blue handprint. They would put up their names and their years and Grantaire _knew_ they would just put their last names up because that’s who they were. They were going to be the first ever gay couple on prom court in Riverside High’s history, the first two blue handprints together on the wall. And it was all a lie._ _

__Grantaire felt guilty. So fucking guilty for tricking everybody that he was some kind of trailblazer when he wasn’t shit, he was just some pathetic-ass dude who clutched Enjolras’s coattails like he was a goddamn life raft. Enjolras was the one who baby gays should look up to, not Grantaire. Enjolras was the heartbeat of the fucking revolution. He deserved someone who would change the world with him._ _

__And most of all, looking up at the wall of pink and blue, he was nervous. He hated to admit it, because they lived in a safe place in a broadly accepting school and town, but who knew what could happen. There were so many places that were so much worse. And here he was, scared to put a handprint on a fucking wall in a hallway that no one walked down anyway._ _

__He was half tempted to get up and leave. Enjolras couldn’t stop him and god knows none of the other couples would want to. He was competition, and not a very good one at that._ _

__“Hey,” Marius said, holding a paintbrush out in front of Grantaire’s face. If he moved he would get a noseful of blue paint. “It’s your turn.”_ _

__Everyone else’s hands were already covered in cracking, drying paint. Grantaire was the last one to go._ _

__Enjolras still wasn’t there._ _

__“Thanks, dude.” He was right handed, so he dipped the paintbrush into the blue paint and started slathering his left hand with it. He had to admit it felt nice, cool and smooth and kind of ticklish._ _

__There was an empty spot on the wall next to Marius and Cosette and Grantaire just went for it, planted his wet hand on the wall like he had nothing to lose. It was kind of underwhelming, really. And it looked sad, just his lonely handprint._ _

__As he pulled his hand away from the wall with a sickening squish he heard footsteps hitting the linoleum, hard, and Enjolras came rounding the corner, a little out of breath. “I’m back,” he said, a little obviously. “Oh, Grantaire. You went without me.”_ _

__Grantaire was still standing there, the paint congealing on his hand. “Was I supposed to wait?”_ _

__“It’s fine.” He picked up the blue paintbrush- a flurry of nerves reappeared in Grantaire’s chest- and was one centimeter away from the skin of his left palm before he looked up at Grantaire’s barely-dried handprint on the wall. “Did you do your left hand?”_ _

__“Yeah. Should I not have?”_ _

__“I’m right handed,” Enjolras said, looking down at his hands kind of dumbly. “I guess I’ll just paint with my left.”_ _

__Grantaire could tell as soon as he switched hands that it was going to be a disaster. Enjolras might have looked like the kind of person to be ambidextrous, but based on the way he was holding the paintbrush he was definitely not. “I can help, if you want.”_ _

__“No, I’ve got it handled.” Enjolras began to sloppily paint his right hand, the brush barely touching skin._ _

__“Let me-”_ _

__“No, I’ve got it.” Enjolras’s brow was furrowed in concentration; he was steadily chewing his lip. “I’ve almost-”_ _

__The paintbrush clattered to the floor, baby blue paint splattering across the linoleum. Enjolras heaved a sigh. “Damn.”_ _

__Grantaire rolled his eyes and bent to pick up the brush, dipping it quickly in the paint can. “Just let me, dude.” Enjolras licked his lips, barely a movement at all, and nodded. Grantaire took his hand in his own. “I’m a pro. Accelerated Art 1, remember?”_ _

__Enjolras huffed out a short laugh and it struck Grantaire how close they were, how he could feel Enjolras’s hot breath on his face. It reminded him of that night in Jehan’s guest room, the way they had stood just slightly too far away and entirely too close at the same time. Grantaire began to paint Enjolras’s hand._ _

__Enjolras shivered, his hand jerking from the sudden motion. Grantaire looked up. Enjolras held his gaze, looking quite like a deer in the headlights. “Sorry. It tickles.”_ _

__Grantaire looked back down. “Yeah.” It was strange, painting someone else’s hand. It felt almost like painting any other canvas but then Enjolras’s fingers would twitch and the illusion would be broken. He was wildly aware of how each breath was shared, a scant inch between their noses. He was also aware of the way the rest of the couples watched them and he fought the urge to take a step back._ _

__He had _kissed_ Enjolras, it shouldn’t be so hard to stand next to him. But it wasn’t just standing, was it? It was standing, toe to toe, in front of a crowd of eyes, tenderly cradling Enjolras’s hand in his own, trying to finish painting it as fast as possible. _ _

__And it’s not like the kiss had been anything._ _

__“There.” Grantaire stepped away. “You’re done.”_ _

__Enjolras looked at his hand, his head tipped slightly to the left. “Okay.” He walked up to the wall and pointed at Grantaire’s handprint. “Is this yours?” Grantaire nodded. “Okay.” He pressed his hand to the wall like Grantaire had, with a forced kind of detachment._ _

__Grantaire kind of wished they would high five, just to see what sound it would make._ _

__“So,” Ben Ward said hesitantly. “Should we wait for it to dry and write our names? I have a sharpie in my bag.”_ _

__So even though their hands were on the wall (two blue handprints, the thumbs overlapping, exactly at eye level) the whole ordeal wasn’t even over._ _

__Grantaire sat, his back against the cold metal lockers, eyes fixed on those handprints. He couldn’t quite tell what bothered him so much. And- maybe ‘bothered’ wasn’t the right word. But looking at those two blue handprints on the wall stirred something in his gut, something not-good, the feeling he got when he procrastinated on a paper until the very last minute._ _

__Enjolras slid down next to him. He sat with his knees jackknifed up to his chest, his arms wrapped loosely around his ankles._ _

__“I feel like I should’ve waited,” Grantaire said. He wanted to follow it up because there was nothing he could say; ‘it would have been more romantic?’ it wasn’t like they were dating for real. ‘It would have been more realistic?’ Enjolras gave a perfectly good excuse for leaving. So he just closed his mouth and stared at the wall of handprints._ _

__“No, it’s alright.” Enjolras reached up to itch the back of his neck; Grantaire could feel the movement beside him. “I made the lemon squares for tomorrow.”_ _

__“Awesome,” Grantaire said, because it felt like the right thing to say._ _

__“Marius and Cosette made buttons.”_ _

__Grantaire laughed in spite of himself. “Will you let that go, dude?”_ _

__“I don’t know,” Enjolras said with a chuckle of his own. “They say stereotypes are rooted in fact, right?”_ _

__Grantaire, in a moment of wild abandon, bumped Enjolras’s shoulder with his own. “Never thought the fearless leader would speak out in _support_ of stereotypes.”_ _

__Enjolras laughed and let his head loll downwards, coming to a rest on his knees, cheek pressed against denim, looking up at Grantaire. “Shut up.”_ _

__Just like in Jehan’s basement guest room, where they had stood three inches apart and Grantaire had felt more reckless than he ever had in his life, a sense of distance came over him, the same out-of-body experience that he felt whenever Enjolras was near. He could see, in his head, clear as day, the two of them sitting against the lockers, laughing to themselves about nothing in particular. In his mind’s eye they looked more like a couple than any of the other pairs gathered in the hallway._ _

__In another life Grantaire would lean over and rest his chin in the crook of Enjolras’s shoulder like Ben Ward was doing to Lila Han, feel the pulse against his skin. Enjolras was wearing that red jacket he was so fond of, real dyed leather from the 80s. The only reason it was real, he explained quite often, was because it lasted so much longer and was better on the environment than the plastic faux stuff. Grantaire would love to be like one of those girlfriends in rom-coms and 50s movies that steals the boyfriend’s jacket and wears it around to smell it (not that he would smell it, because that was _weird_ ) except the smell of leather always reminded him of his dad. Besides, Enjolras didn’t smell like anything special. He may have had good hygiene (his hair always gave off some kind of herbal scent, like some hippie lady had just dumped a bunch of essential oils over his head) but he was still a teenage boy and he always smelled vaguely of sweat, but not in an off-putting way, it was just… there. A constant reminder that he had just come from gym or had been sitting out in the sun or had just run from one class to another through the crowded hallways. So instead Grantaire just pulled out his phone and refreshed his emails because he had absolutely nothing else to do. _ _

__They were the last to write their names because they were the last to put their hands up. There was a whole line of barely-dried handprints along the wall; Grantaire couldn’t tear his eyes away. Pink, blue. Pink, blue, Pink, blue. Blue, blue._ _

__It stuck out like a sore thumb. It shouldn’t have, but it did. It reminded him of Enjolras, in a way, with his Old Navy/Gap rotation of outfit choices and arms that could easily fit under a football jersey, or a baseball shirt, or something. But no one who had ever met Enjolras would ever accuse him of fitting in, never. There was just something about him._ _

__Something about him that shone through like the sun through the stained-glass windows of a church as he revealed with a flourish and a smile like all the stars in the sky his handiwork in the middle of his paint palm- ‘ENJOLRAS. HE/HIM.’_ _

__Grantaire felt a twist in his chest, the kind that made him want to say “fuck” out loud. He took the marker and in the center of his own hand wrote ‘GRANTAIRE.’ And then, with one last look back at that thousand-watt smile, ‘HE/HIM.’_ _

__It felt like another step, somehow. The two blues. The _pronouns_. It wasn’t progress, not by any stretch, but it damn well felt like it._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is just me compensating for the fact that my school has no spirit or traditions and i desperately want it  
> also i promise this isn't jfk propaganda he just had banging campaign posters ok  
> i just took the us history ap test and i wanna diieeeeee


	7. A Shark That Can't Stop Swimming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The rally doesn't go totally according to plan, especially for Grantaire.

Grantaire called Eponine after school on Thursday. He had a couple of hours to kill before the rally and there was no way in hell he was actually going to do his math homework. 

Eponine answered on the third ring. “Hey.” There was noise on her side of the phone, like the TV was on in the background or something. “What do you want?”

“I just wanted to talk,” Grantaire said honestly. 

“Okay. What about?”

“I dunno. Are you coming to the rally tonight?” There was, Grantaire realized, an unopened bag of sour cream and onion chips in his desk drawer. He tried to open them quietly with little luck.

“The rally?” Grantaire could hear Eponine raise her eyebrow through the phone.

“The prom campaign event. Enjolras calls it the rally.” Grantaire crunched a chip. “It’s stupid, I know, but now I can’t think of it as anything else.”

Eponine was silent for a few seconds. “I’m not voting for you, you know.”

“What? Why not?” Their friendship was based on loyalty; it always had been. They had become friends after Grantaire refused to rat out Eponine for running an underground cigarette-peddling ring in fifth grade (she would steal packs from her parents and resell them, two cigarettes for five bucks. It was quite the racket). For years they had been each other’s sole life rafts in the ocean of teenage mayhem and stupid mistakes; there was a reason why Eponine’s emergency contact was Grantaire. 

“I’m voting for Marius and Cosette. Obviously.”

“Oh.” It did make sense, in a way. There had been a point in sophomore year when she would have literally waded into war for Marius. It made sense that there would be lingering feelings. But Marius was taken, she knew that, everybody knew that- it made no sense to vote for your crush’s girlfriend as well. “Why?”

There was another pause. Grantaire could hear the TV clear as day through the speaker; it was playing a commercial for some kind of medicine. “We’re not really friends anymore, R. If you haven’t noticed.”

“What are you talking about?” 

“You’ve all but ditched me to go hang out with the social justice league. I never see you anymore.” 

“But- I- that’s not true!” Grantaire sputtered.

Eponine sighed. “When was the last time we hung out?”

Grantaire mentally went back in time, all the days he had sat on the bleachers, all the times he had passed Eponine in the hallways and not said hi. “We hung out two weeks ago. At my place.”

“Yeah, and you talked about Enjolras the _entire time_ ,” she explained. “Look. I’m fine with us not being friends anymore. I just wish you would have told me, okay? I don’t like just being dumped off like trash.”

“That’s not- we’re still friends, Ep,” Grantaire protested. “I just had a lot of stuff on my plate.”

“You think I don’t have shit going on?” Fuck, she was angry. Grantaire hated when she was angry. 

“I never said that,” he ceded. In that moment he felt strangely like one of those boomer ‘I hate my wife’ cartoons, where the guy always complains that the woman has to be right all the time. “What’s been going on?”

“If you had spent one second of the time you spend with fucking Marilyn Monroe and the geek squad with me, you wouldn’t even have to fucking ask that.” Some part of Grantaire, the part that would probably grow up to complain about his wife, said that she was being overdramatic. But a larger, more rational part of him understood. Grantaire used to have lots of friends in elementary school; other than Mark, not many people disliked him. He was weird, but he was funny, and he always made jokes about the teacher that got him in trouble and earned the respect of his classmates. Then he hit sixth grade and maybe Harry Potter or playing adventurers during recess or insubordination wasn’t cool anymore and they had dropped him, just refused to acknowledge his presence. “I thought you were better than that, R.”

There were so many things Grantaire wanted to say. _I didn’t mean to, I was going to invite you over Sunday night but never did, do you want to join us on the bleachers?_ “I’m sorry,” he said instead.

“You don’t need to kill yourself over me or anything. Just… do what you’ve been doing and leave me alone for a bit, okay? I’ve got some shit I need to work through.” 

“Okay.” Grantaire nodded, even though she couldn’t see him. “Okay.”

“I’ll see you tonight.”

“Okay.”

“I’m still not going to vote for you, though.”

“That’s fine.”

There was the slam of a door somewhere in Eponine’s house that reverberated all the way through the phone. “Bye, R.”

“See you.”

~

Grantaire picked Enjolras up at 5:38.

Enjolras was waiting on his front stoop, tapping his foot against the concrete and feverishly checking his watch. A distinct look of relief washed over his face as he saw Grantaire’s car coming down the road. He practically sprinted to the car, climbing into the passenger seat and attempting to buckle his seat belt without jostling the large tray of lemon squares balanced in his lap. “Thank god,” he said. “I thought you weren’t coming.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Grantaire said, feeling slightly offended. “I’m on time.”

“It takes fifteen minutes to drive to school and we wanted to be ten minutes early to set up.”

Grantaire snorted. “Maybe it takes fifteen if you’re driving, granny. It should only take ten.”

Enjolras huffed and looked pointedly out the window. “Fine. But if we’re late, it’s your ass.”

“Aye-aye, captain.” 

Grantaire turned on the radio. His dad had been in the car before him and he always changed the station to some slightly staticky classic rock station. They were playing the Who, though, so Grantaire left it on. For a while they drove in silence, just listening to the music.

“I don’t like this song,” Enjolras interrupted, about halfway through. “I don’t like how casually they talk about rape.”

“Come on,” Grantaire said. “It’s the Who. They’re not, like, supporting it. It’s a character.”

“It’s insensitive. I get that it was a different time and all, but we shouldn’t be endorsing music that promotes this kind of thinking.”

Grantaire laughed. “Not everything has to be political, Apollo.”

“Not everyone has the privilege of being able to overlook the politics intrinsically baked into these kinds of songs, _Grantaire_ ,” Enjolras shot back, and the tops of his ears were red, as red as his jacket. “All songs are political in nature.”

“What’s your favorite song?” Grantaire asked, partially to make his argument but mostly because he wanted to know. He wanted to learn and learn and never stop learning about Enjolras.

“Talkin ‘Bout a Revolution,” he said quickly, as if he had the answer planned.

“Who’s that by? Marx?”

He couldn’t see it, but Enjolras was definitely glaring. “It’s _Tracy Chapman_ ,” he said, as if she were the fucking president or something.

Grantaire snorted. “Alright. I thought so.” In the passenger seat beside him, Enjolras huffed. Grantaire would have rolled his eyes if he hadn’t been trying to cut across four lanes of traffic to make a slightly illegal left turn. “Don’t you ever listen to, like, Material Girl and cut loose?”

“I don’t like that song,” Enjolras said, because naturally the point went right over his head.

“You think about this too much.”

“Fine,” Enjolras bit. “What’s your favorite song?”

“It’s Late by Queen.”

Enjolras didn’t seem to have a comeback for that one; it seemed even he wasn’t too good for Queen. Hah. “Fine,” he repeated. “Maybe I do think about this too much.”

“Thank you,” Grantaire commended. 

“But I think you think about this too little.” Enjolras seemed to take Grantaire’s silence as a victory because he continued, cruelly, “I think you think about everything too little.”

It stung, definitely. Because Enjolras had just confirmed what the blackest parts of his mind had been saying for years, proved in less than ten seconds what everyone thought of him. And all those times Enjolras had seemed to be genuinely nice to him- joking in the car, offering him half of his low-cal veggie straws at lunch, all of it- he had always been thinking, somewhere in his mind, that Grantaire was what, shuffling through life on autopilot?

“Fuck you,” Grantaire said, because it was the only thing he could think of to say. “I think about things plenty.”

“Prove it,” Enjolras contested, because apparently he was incapable of being a dick.

“Fine. Fucking- fine. I mean, I think that this song, and this album as a whole, promotes ideals like rape and drug use as a part of the satire.” Enjolras opened his mouth, but he had given Grantaire the floor, and he was going to use it, goddamn it. “They talk about stuff like racism and the persecution of gay people in other songs, so they definitely, like, know about it. But the character that they’re singing about was raised in a culture that promotes shit like sexism and rape culture and whatever. The whole album is about toxic masculinity, of course they need to demonstrate how shitty this dude is and how society made him that way. You can’t- fucking- crucify them for playing a character.”

Enjolras didn’t say anything for a couple seconds. “Oh,” he said at last.

“I did a project on it last year,” Grantaire mumbled, feeling weirdly shy.

Enjolras kept his mouth shut for almost the remainder of the ride.

It wasn’t until they pulled into the parking lot of the school that Enjolras began, “look, I’m sorry-”

“We’re here,” Grantaire said.

Enjolras had that look on his face, the drawn brows, the barely-parted lips, that meant he had something more to say. He looked at his watch, back out at the high school, tinted orange in the setting sun, and mechanically unbuckled his seat belt. His fingers twitched as he moved. “Then let’s go.”

Enjolras never slammed the car door, but Grantaire wished he did. Then at least he would know how to feel. 

They ended up arriving ten minutes early, just like Enjolras had wanted. The parking lot bordered one side of the cafeteria, the side that was all one big window. The lights were on inside and there were already a couple of people milling about. It had just become the part of mid-spring when the sun stayed up for longer, when it tried to trick you into thinking it was earlier than it was. The whole world seemed stained sepia and lavender, the trees casting blurry shadows on the pavement. Enjolras stood by the car holding his tray of lemon squares, his hair getting ruffled by the breeze. He looked over at Grantaire and frowned. “You coming?”

It was going to be hard to fake it tonight. All he could think about was the way Enjolras had said ‘I think you think about everything to little,’ like the guidance counselor he had seen in third grade after he had written mean anonymous letters to a girl in his class (he had sold some bullshit about taking out his anger towards his mom but really, truly, he had absolutely no idea why he had done it) who talked gently about thinking things through before you did them and taking other people’s feelings into consideration. And that was what Enjolras had told him, too, when he had signed them up for this whole prom shitstorm. He needed to think about things. 

_Fuck you_ , he thought, the night air cutting through his light jacket, making him shiver. _I think plenty_.

 _But do you_? that nagging part of his mind kept asking. And if Grantaire sang the Star Spangled Banner in his head for the remainder of the walk into the building to avoid his brain realizing the truth, that was nobody’s business but his own. 

Grantaire had never been to one of the prom court events before. He had thought they were dumb as shit- he still did. The first thing he thought of when he walked in the cafeteria was the club fair he had gone to at the beginning of freshman year: every couple camped out at a cafeteria table to hand out baked goods and show off their posters. Marius and Cosette had a fucking _trifold_. 

Grantaire hadn’t been in the cafeteria since, what, sophomore year? Even in the middle of winter, when their normal table got snowed out, him and Eponine sat in the little nook of hard sofas tucked next to the main staircase. He went through the lunch line every day, sure, but he always got out of that hot mess as soon as he could. 

Enjolras seemed to know his way around the caf, though, picking a small round table next to utensils-and-sauces caddy. As per request Grantaire had brought an easel from home and he propped up one of their posters, the Kennedy one with the picture of Enjolras with his fist in the air. Grantaire sat on the uncomfortable circular seat and waited for people to show up. 

It wasn’t like he expected a flood of students to come through the double doors at 6:00 exactly, but he expected more than the three people that were milling about. At other tables.

“What are we supposed to do?” Grantaire asked. He didn’t want to talk to Enjolras but god, he was so bored. “What are they going to ask us?”

“I talked to someone who’s been on prom court before,” which meant Feuilly, who was a freshman in college and who Grantaire had only met a couple of times when he sometimes popped into ABC meetings to stand in the back, right behind Grantaire’s desk, and poke kindly-worded but devastating holes in Enjolras’s arguments, “and he said not much. You just stand around and look pretty and come up with something pithy to say if they ask why they should vote for you.”

Grantaire pretended to know what ‘pithy’ meant and nodded. “What should we say?”

Enjolras didn’t look at him; his eyes bounced back and forth between the other couples: their posters, the cookies they were giving out, how close they were standing. “Just let me do the talking.”

Right, because Grantaire didn’t think enough. It took all his energy not to scowl.

Grantaire left just as the crowd started to pick up. Not left left, just wandered around the cafeteria, pausing at each table to stare intently at the posters. None of them were willing to give him free treats except Marius, who gave him a fun-sized Snickers bar. He was right about the posters, though. They were all pretty terrible. That gave him a small sense of satisfaction. 

Marius and Cosette had made a trifold poster with pictures of them together, polaroids, aesthetic and pretty, pinned into the cardboard. Grantaire stood in front of their table for a while, looking at all the pictures. Them on dates, at the Spring Fling, at the National Honor Society induction ceremony. There was one picture that Grantaire couldn’t stop looking at; it was them, Marius balanced precariously on Cosette’s shoulders because she was a swimmer and her upper arm strength was Herculean, and he could tell they were in Madame Buchard’s room because above them was the poster of French-speaking African countries and he could see Enjolras’s arm, a blurry flash of red leather, in the corner of the picture. Where had Grantaire been when the picture was taken? 

“So, why should I vote for you?” Grantaire asked, hands in his pockets, just to see the way Marius squinted his eyes and tipped his head slightly to his left, mouth hanging open as he tried to figure out what to say.

“You know,” Cosette broke in, “if you stay over here too long people are going to think you and Enjolras are on the rocks.”

Grantaire forced himself to laugh. “You’re probably right.” He gave them a quick salute and began to walk away, escaping the comfortable bubble around their table. “You’ve got my vote.”

Enjolras was deep in conversation when Grantaire got back. He was talking to some girl Grantaire vaguely recognized, something about moving forward to embrace the future. Enjolras shot Grantaire a withering look. The girl didn’t seem to notice.

“We should play music,” Grantaire suggested after she had left. “It’ll draw people in.”

“It’ll be a distraction,” Enjolras countered, leaning against the table, palms flat against the grey plastic.

“No, come on.” Grantaire reached over and grabbed Enjolras’s phone and held it, just for a second, feeling the weight in his hand. “What’s your password?” There was some kind of itch under his skin, making him feel restless and liable to do something stupid. 

“Play your own damn music,” Enjolras hissed.

“No,” Grantaire pushed, trying a random assortment of numbers. The phone vibrated angrily at him. 4 more tries left. “You’ll judge my music.”

“Give me back my phone.” Enjolras leaned over, way into Grantaire’s space, like that night in Jehan’s basement or that afternoon earlier in the week when they had stood half a centimeter apart, the only thing between them a paintbrush and their hands touching. He grabbed his phone and jammed it into the back pocket of his jeans, where Grantaire couldn’t get it back without being _really_ awkward.

It was a shame. Grantaire wanted to know what kind of playlists Enjolras had.

Grantaire was getting antsy. His mind was moving at a mile a minute, like a train, never slow enough to fully settle on one thing. He contemplated all of the dumb things he could do. He could throw a rock through a window. He could reach into Enjolras’s ass pocket and take his phone and play whatever weird hippie music he listened to. He could stand up and kiss Enjolras, right there, pressed up against the cafeteria table, skin on skin and on dirty plastic tabletop. What would happen if he just screamed? Everyone would look. Would Enjolras be mad at him if he screamed?

In a moment Grantaire felt the sky fall on him, the pressure on him as deep and heavy as the Mariana Trench. His skin itched and his stomach roiled and he just felt horribly idle. He was going to be sick. Enjolras was talking to somebody, somebody Grantaire kind of knew from the school musicals. Would Enjolras be mad if he threw up?

“Enj,” Grantaire said, as soon as the kid was gone. He had never used that nickname before. That was reserved for Combeferre and Courfeyrac and Jehan and Bahorel and all the others. But Grantaire knew in that moment that he wouldn’t be able to get the full name out even if he tried. “I need to leave.”

“What?” Enjolras’s face drew up in confusion. “Why? Are you sick? Did you have something else scheduled?”

“No. No, I- I just need to go around the block. I’ll be back. I just- I can’t be here right now.” If anyone would understand how it felt, when the world felt like too much and something in your gut told you to keep moving, like a shark that can’t stop swimming or it’ll die, it was Enjolras.

Enjolras who, to his credit, blew out a sharp breath and nodded. “Be quick. I’ll tell people you’re in the bathroom.”

“Thank you,” Grantaire said. 

It was dark out already when Grantaire stepped outside of the cafeteria, the only light coming from inside the school and the flickering street lamps in the parking lot. He started walking because he needed to feel the soles of his feet against the ground, rubber on pavement pushing him forward. 

Eponine’s house was only ten minutes from the school, a stationary trailer in one of those state-mandated low income housing blocks. It used to be smaller but Grantaire had watched it grow, her parents adding addition after addition until it was almost the size of a real house, the kind Eponine cut out of magazines. Eponine wasn’t home, Grantaire knew. She was in her car, driving to the high school to show her support for Marius and Cosette. But at that moment it was the only direction that Grantaire knew to go. His feet moved on muscle memory, his head spinning out of control, not bothering to read street signs or watch for cars at the crosswalks. Eponine told him once that one day she was going to live in a Victorian house, a big ostentatious one with a turret and a wraparound porch and she would fight any developer that came and tried to tear it down. She was fierce like that, when she set her mind to a goal. Grantaire had no doubt that she would get that house. Hell, he would probably be there to help her paint it yellow.

Maybe not anymore. They weren’t friends anymore.

It was dark out but it was hot, summer hot, even though it was only mid-April. It had been colder earlier in the night before the wind had died down and left a rotting sort of humidity. In a week and a half was spring break and it would get too hot to ignore and when they got back all the girls would be wearing shorts and Enjolras would stop wearing his red jacket because real leather got too hot in the summertime. 

Grantaire wished he had his headphones. If he had them he would turn on the playlist Eponine had made him, the one with whiny emo boys and melancholic guitar licks and 90s girl groups singing about _supreme nothing, oh yeah_. But he didn’t so he just walked, his legs moving independently from the rest of his body, and the only things to focus on were the smell of somebody barbecuing and the sound of some kind of party a few houses away.

He got to Eponine’s house earlier than he expected. Every time he saw it he was reminded anew of why Eponine was so hellbent on getting that yellow Victorian. Her house was boxy and poorly designed, a sprawling mess of grey cubes all stacked next to and on top of each other. It was an affront to architecture.

Grantaire had always loved the trailer park, though. He didn’t know why. He liked it in the nighttime, when all the windows were lit up, each a slightly different shade of off-white. He liked being able to hear snippets of conversation and music and see people’s clothes drying on the lines outside.

Azelma was leaning out of one of the first-floor windows smoking. Grantaire waved. “What are you doing here?” She hollered down at him. She didn’t need to shout; it seemed to barely cut through the humid thickness of the night air. “Ep said you were whoring yourself out with your boyfriend.”

“Eponine exaggerated,” Grantaire said with a shrug. “How’s it going, snout?” It was an old joke, from way back when Azelma used to push up her nose and snort like a pig for a laugh. She had grown out of it by fourth grade, but the name had stuck. 

“Same as usual.” She flicked her cigarette, sending orange flakes down into the dirt. 

“Cool.” _Same as usual_ meant nothing when you were talking about Eponine’s family and Azelma knew that. 

“Go back to your boyfriend,” she said. “I’ll see you around.”

They probably wouldn’t. They ran in different circles. “See you, snout.”

She grinned at him and ground out her cigarette on the windowsill. Grantaire turned away and left the trailer park.

He felt a little better, though he didn’t know why. But as he walked back to the high school he made the conscious decision to let it go, to breathe deeply and shake out the restless feeling. And it worked, for the most part. He didn’t think he would punch Enjolras in the jaw as soon as he opened his pretty little mouth.

Enjolras didn’t say anything, though, when he got back, just wound an arm around Grantaire’s waist and didn’t let go until the end of the event, when the lemon bars had all been given away and the janitors started to move the cafeteria tables to mop the floor. In the car Grantaire rolled down the windows and put on his driving playlist, the kind of music that he imagined would play in some idealized teen drama. Enjolras didn’t talk, just hung his arm out the window and let his hand coast on the wind. All the lights were on in his house and when he opened the door Grantaire could see someone who looked like his mom in the doorway, taking off a coat and greeting Enjolras with a hug. 

Grantaire closed the windows and drove home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is about the end of my pre-written chapters oops. hopefully i won't get off of my schedule but i might and that's just the way the soup congeals sometimes.
> 
> i've started watching she-ra and the princesses of power and i'm learning how to skateboard. are y'all doing anything new during quarantine?


	8. A Big Favor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A change of scenery.

Enjolras called at 7:30 on the Monday before spring break. It wasn’t exactly on the dot, but Grantaire was almost certain that it was his clocks that were off and not Enjolras’s. 

“Hey,” Enjolras said.

“Hi.”

“I need to ask you a big favor.” Enjolras’s voice was soft, almost as if he was trying to keep someone from listening in. Grantaire had a feeling that that didn’t bode well for the rest of the conversation.

Grantaire lifted an eyebrow. “What, bigger than pretending to date?”

Enjolras paused. “Kind of?”

“Jesus, do you need me to bury someone?”

“No!” Enjolras sighed. It came crackly through the phone. “I need you to come camping with me over spring break.”

“What?”

“It’s not really camping,” Enjolras quickly corrected. “We have a cabin on a lake and we always go over spring break. If you have something going on that’s fine, I just need her to get off my back. She won’t stop talking about it. I usually go with Combeferre but my mom thought that since you’re, well, my boyfriend…”

“It would be weird to refuse to invite me,” Grantaire supplied. Which was surprisingly astute of him, considering that his brain was still repeating ‘ _what_ ’ like a broken record. Something about this seemed even more outlandish than anything he had done with Enjolras. A practice kiss in a friend’s basement was one thing, but camping seemed like an activity for a level of companionship they hadn’t reached yet.

“Yeah.”

Grantaire mentally went through his calendar for spring break. He was going to go to a concert with Eponine. They were going to drive in the city and stay, painting the town red, until the wee hours of the morning when they would go back to Grantaire’s house, watch reruns of House Hunters, and sleep until noon. But then again… “How long would it be?”

“Just a few days. Three or four.”

 _Fuck it_. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Enjolras sounded a little breathless.

“Yeah, sure. I don’t have anything else planned.” Not anymore, not since Eponine had friend-dumped him over the phone.

“Thank you so much. Seriously.”

“Look at it this way. You’re helping me fulfill a dream, Apollo.” Grantaire joked. “I’m finally going to be able to get axe murdered in the woods. You just don’t get that kind of gruesome killing in the suburbs, you know.”

Enjolras didn’t laugh. “Grantaire.” 

“That’s my name, don’t wear it out,” he said, a bold-faced lie. If Enjolras wanted to say his name every last second of his life, Grantaire would have no arguments.

“Thank you. You’re a really good friend.”

It was amazing, in a way, to hear Enjolras openly and willingly admit to them being friends. But after being introduced as ‘boyfriend’ for weeks, it stung. “Wow, friendzoning me? After all we’ve been through?”

To his credit, Enjolras did laugh at that. “I’ll text you a list of what to pack. See you tomorrow.”

“See you,” Grantaire said, but Enjolras had already hung up.

When he went downstairs to grab some cold pizza from the fridge he saw his reflection briefly in the hall mirror and was shocked at the person that looked back. He looked happy.

God, he was so fucked.

~

Enjolras was going to pick him up on Saturday. It kind of hurt to set an alarm for 9 a.m. the next morning on Friday night, when he had spent hours playing old flash games from his childhood instead of packing. 

It was only a couple of days. They would drive out on Saturday and be back by lunchtime on Tuesday. That was Grantaire’s only saving grace. 

He had only barely finished throwing a couple changes of clothes into a duffle bag when the doorbell rang. Grantaire’s parents were still asleep (he had inherited the late to bed, late to rise mentality from them) so he slipped out unnoticed, thank god. He wasn’t sure if he could handle some sort of inane conversation about sunscreen or safe sex or whatever over his cereal.

They had had a conversation the other night at dinner, after his mom had realized he was going on a weekend-long trip with his ‘boyfriend,’ about making smart choices and respecting yourself. His parents seemed to flipflop back and forth on whether his dating a guy was just a phase or him ‘finally settling’ on being ‘fully gay,’ so it was always a little confusing whenever they tried to talk to him about Enjolras. 

Grantaire tried to push the thought out of his mind. It was useless for them to even bother reminding him to make safe choices if Enjolras was involved- the guy was like the embodiment of those middle school health class lectures; a little awkward, a lot ineffective, but always with the best of intentions.

Enjolras was waiting on the porch, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet with his eyes fixed on the stucco wall in front of him. For a moment Grantaire didn’t know what to think; he was wearing khaki shorts and a t-shirt, and it was so different from his normal fashion that Grantaire barely connected the bridge between the two Enjolrases, the one from school and the one standing before him right then.

“Hey,” Enjolras said. There was an unblended white streak of sunscreen along his jaw, like the gash of a scar across his face. “Ready to go?”

“Is it too late to back out now?” He asked.

Enjolras sighed, but there was no annoyance in it. “Considering that you’ve already packed a bag, I’d say yeah. Otherwise my mom bought extra snacks for nothing.”

“What kind of snacks?”

Enjolras smiled like he knew he had won. “You’ll soon find out. Come on, my mom’s waiting.”

Enjolras had the kind of car with a trunk door that opened with the press of a button, and Grantaire tossed his duffle into the pile of bags already there. “Is it just you and your mom? Like, is your dad coming?” As soon as he said it he regretted it; Grantaire absolutely did not want to start a vacation with a lecture about heteronormativity. Maybe Enjolras’s dad had died of cancer and he was being extraordinarily insensitive. Maybe Enjolras had been saying ‘moms’ this whole time and Grantaire had just misheard.

But he just shook his head. “Considering that my parents got divorced when I was one and he lives in Belgium, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that he won’t be joining us.” Enjolras smiled, thank god. “You’ve got to sit on the right side, by the way. I sit on the left.”

“Isn’t that fitting,” Grantaire mumbled, and Enjolras must have heard because he laughed as he got into the backseat.

“Maison,” Enjolras’s mother said. It took Grantaire a second, after parsing through the heavy French accent on the word, to realize that ‘Maison’ was probably Enjolras’s never-heard-before (at least by him) first name, judging by the way his head shot up without a second thought. _Maison_ , Grantaire contemplated, and filed the name away somewhere deep in his memory. “Which one of your friends is this? Could your boyfriend not make it?”

Her accent seemed to only apply to the name, as it disappeared almost entirely as she spoke. Enjolras had always said his family was French, he just neglected to mention how French. If they tried to feed him snails at any point this weekend, Grantaire could not be held responsible for his actions.

“ _Maman_ ,” Enjolras said, with the kind of humiliated whine specific to an embarrassed teenager, “ _c’est Grantaire_.” And then, when she didn’t seem to understand, “ _il est mon copain_.”

“Oh!” She turned around in the driver’s seat. It was the first time Grantaire had seen her head on and he was stunned by how similar her and her son looked. The same hair, the same roman nose, the same arch of their eyebrows that always seemed a little judgemental. “It’s hard to keep all the names of the friends straight. It’s very nice to meet you, Grantaire.”

He waved, which immediately felt awkward, but had seemed like the right thing to do at the time. 

She- Ms. Enjolras? Grantaire was going to have to figure out what to call her. It was going to get weird pretty quick if her son’s boyfriend called him solely by last name. Then again, that’s what everybody called him, so maybe it was okay- drummed on the wheel and said, “let’s get this show on the road!” 

It was still off-putting to see Enjolras outside of the context of the ABC. He had a certain persona that he liked to put out at school; there was a reason his nickname was their ‘fearless leader.’ The way he power-walked through the hallways, even the way he dressed. He dressed like he stepped out of an Old Navy catalogue, but there was always something unexpected, something that made you look twice. Maybe he would wear jeans and his red jacket and a women’s blouse to top it off. It was a great way to get attention, if that’s what he wanted, but Grantaire never could quite make up his mind about whether Enjolras had a great sense of style or a terrible one. But in the car, dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, Enjolras acted like any other teenager, resting his head against the window and groaning good-naturedly when his mom turned the radio to a country station.

Speaking of which, what was their deal with country music?

Judging by the car ride, it seemed to be all Ms. Enjolras listened to, and although he feigned disdain Grantaire couldn’t help but notice the way Enjolras mouthed along to the words when he thought no one was looking.

They had said the car ride was only two hours, so Grantaire looked out the window, watching the trees all blur together. He played the alphabet game with himself but got stuck on Q. 

He spent the rest of the time watching Enjolras. Every once in a while his mom would mumble something in French and he would mumble back, quick and thoughtless. Grantaire couldn’t help but feel like an interloper. Did Combeferre speak French? If he did, did they still have those private conversations and just hope he didn’t listen in? God, he hoped they weren’t talking about him. 

Some of the country music was kind of good. Which was a sentence Grantaire never expected to say.

The car ride was kind of depressing, though. Nobody really talked. At one point Grantaire thought Enjolras was going to initiate a conversation, but all he did was point out a restaurant/movie theater called Chunky’s, which they all agreed was objectively the worst name for a dining establishment. 

Grantaire had always had these fantasies about road trips. He dreamed about coasting down empty rural roads, blasting music and singing along. He had created this plan for a cross-country trip, stopping at various haunted attractions along the way. The Lizzie Borden house in Massachusetts. The Mothman Statue in West Virginia. He didn’t know who he would possibly want to invite; his brain always just filled in the blank with some vague approximation of a friend. Definitely not Enjolras, though. Something about this car trip clued him into the fact that Enjolras would be the most boring road trip partner ever.

Highways turned into suburban streets, which turned into tiny dirt roads framed by towering trees; Grantaire could catch glimpses of sparkling water when the forests thinned. Placed slapdash along the road were little cabins, simple and unsophisticated, with names hand-painted on the mailboxes like ‘Loon Hollow’ and ‘Hi-Ho, the Derry-o’s!’ 

They drove through a small town, barely a town at all, with a pub and a funeral parlor and a hardware store. A grocery store called the ‘Food Mart.’ The streets were paved, but they were so dusty they might as well have been dirt. They passed a small landing where a family, knee deep in the water, was pushing a speedboat into the lake. It was the first time Grantaire had gotten a good look at it; the lake was beautiful, glittering blue and framed with trees. It was the platonic ideal of a lake, like something from a painting. 

Enjolras got more antsy as they grew closer, tapping his foot and running his hands through his hair, trying to see the lake through the trees. He still had that smear of sunscreen on his face.

Slowly the impenetrable wall of trees on either side of the car opened up, revealing on one side the whole expanse of the lake, a small beach crowded with floaties and boats that had been run aground, waiting to be taken out for another spin. On the other side was, for lack of a better word, a trailer park. It wasn’t a trailer park in the way Eponine’s neighborhood was; the houses were all near-identical, a rustic red with white trim and little clues at the underlying wealth: sail bags shoved under the steps, heavy wooden adirondack chairs facing the horizon. They parked the car in what seemed to be a public lot, nothing more than a patch of dirt sparsely filled with equally dusty cars with things like ‘WASH ME’ written by childrens’ fingers on the grimy windshields. 

Enjolras practically leapt out of the car, standing with his hands on his hips, his head tilted up to the sky, breathing in the smell of the forest and the water. It was too warm in the direct sunlight; Grantaire couldn’t wait to return to the cool cover of the trees.

They unpacked the car and, laden with bags and coolers, followed Enjolras across the street and up the slight incline to one of the cabins, nestled half in the woods, with a large number 3 hung over the door. 

Enjolras was practically vibrating with excitement as his mother walked up the rickety-looking wooden steps and unlocked the door. He rushed in behind her, dropping his bags on the floor and holding his arms out on either side of him, almost as if reenacting a crucifixion. “ _Oh, le château Enjolras_!” He exclaimed reverently. “ _Bonjour, bonjour_!” 

Judging by his mom’s lack of reaction, this was a common occurrence. It was weird to see this side of Enjolras. Grantaire had seen him passionate, of course, about more things than he could count, but never the sense of childlike wonder and vigor he seemed incensed with as soon as the car had begun its trek into the wilderness.

The cabin was small; it looked small from the outside but felt even smaller upon entry. The walls were covered all over with that ugly 70s orange wood paneling and reminded Grantaire of his basement. The majority of the space was taken up by a confusing combination of a living room, a kitchen, and a dining room all in one. A couch by the door, a kitchen set reminiscent of one in an apartment or the galley of a ship, a table with two chairs by the window. A bookshelf, a coffee table, a cabinet with a mirror mounted on it. There were three closed doors, and as Enjolras and his mom went about opening up the cabin they revealed themselves to be two bedrooms and a bathroom. It was quaint and kind of ugly and comforting all in one. 

“Come on,” Enjolras said after he had opened a window with considerable effort, the old windowpane squealing as he pushed it up. “You can put your stuff down in the room.”

Enjolras’s room seemed to be the only room that wasn’t affected by the ugly orange wood- it had been painted over white and was surprisingly bare of decoration. There was a bureau with a lamp and next to it, a pile of dusty, old-looking books. There was a small armchair with roses on it that looked like it had been stolen from a nursing home. Most importantly, there was one large queen bed in the middle of the room.

Enjolras seemed to see it at the same time as Grantaire. “Oh,” he mumbled. “I forgot. We’re going to have to share- I always shared with Combeferre. You don’t mind, do you? I could always set up the couch for you, if you’d feel better with that.”

No, Grantaire did not want to share a bed with Enjolras. He passionately did _not_ want to share a bed with Enjolras. But if he refused, he would have to spend three nights on a midcentury pleather couch and how would that look to Enjolras’s mom, two boyfriends that can’t even share a bed?

“It’s fine.” He dumped his duffle bag on the side closest to the door. “Dibs on this side.”

Enjolras looked relieved. “Good. Okay. I can- I’ll show you around.”

“Yeah.” Grantaire wanted nothing more than to leave this bedroom, stuffy from the winter months of disuse. 

There wasn’t much of a tour to be had in the cabin, given that everything was kind of… there. It wasn’t until they reached the bathroom that Enjolras dropped the second bomb. “We don’t have a shower in the cabin- everyone has to use the communal showers up the hill.”

Something about the way he said ‘up the hill’ with such ease sat strangely with Grantaire. Enjolras seemed so at ease here, and he had never noticed until now how tensely Enjolras carried himself throughout the day until he saw his figure relax in the embrace of the trees. 

But also. Communal showers were gross. He knew that when he went to college he would likely have to meddle with them, but it still felt a little early to be taking a shower with a bunch of other bougie vacationers.

Enjolras led him ‘up the hill’ to the showers and Grantaire studied each of the cabins they passed, nearly the same but distinguished in little things, like the curtains they had or the clothes they had hanging on the line out front. The showerhouse was a squat cement thing, just a floor and a roof and lines of wooden stalls. “It’s not so bad,” Enjolras argued vehemently, “you just have to make sure to wear shoes. Athlete’s foot is no joke.”

Just how Grantaire had planned to spend his senior spring break. On the lookout for athlete’s foot. 

It was a chilly day, at least compared to the projected weather for the rest of the weekend, and Grantaire was too tired to do anything particularly strenuous. There was a lake right there, which meant he could go swimming or lie comatose on the floating platform ten feet off the shore or steal a boat and sail around the little island he could see, camped out in the center of the lake like a toad in a puddle. Or he could if he knew how to sail.

But car rides always tired him out, and it wasn’t hot enough to take advantage of any particularly summery activities, so when they returned to the cabin Enjolras suggested they read and Grantaire agreed. They sat in the living area in the center of the cabin- Enjolras at the table, Grantaire on the couch. Enjolras had brought a whole library of books and had chosen, off the top of the pile, some boring-sounding one that had been on some bestseller lists the previous year. Grantaire had not known that this impromptu vacation was going to be of the literary sort, so he had to go hunting through the bookshelf by the couch. Enjolras said that he had already read all the books they had in the house, so he had free reign over whatever he could find. Whatever he could find happened to be a strange assortment of classic literature, New York Times bestsellers, and antique children’s books. Grantaire barely recognized half of them; they hadn’t made it into his childhood of big-name serieses, all with faded, fabric-bound covers and names like Good Morning, Miss Dove! and Movie Shoes and Roller Skates. They didn’t intrigue him but they certainly seemed more palatable than the trite murder mysteries and the classics that he had already pretended to read in English class, so he settled in on the couch with a copy of Heidi and resigned himself to a calm, albeit boring, afternoon.

Heidi was a good book- he had remembered that from when his mom had read it to him as a kid- but that didn’t stop his eyes from wandering off the pages and up to Enjolras, his head down, stoically turning pages with the kind of concentration singularly reserved for book lovers. Every once in a while he stopped and spoke a line, soundlessly, to himself, ruminating on the words before continuing. It was nice, Grantaire decided. He felt relaxed for the first time in a long time.

The relaxation bubble lasted for about an hour. 

Enjolras was still entirely invested in his book, but Grantaire had gotten to the second half where Heidi goes to school in town, which was objectively the worst part of the book. Through the open window Grantaire could hear kids playing, running up and down the dirt road and dodging out of the way of oncoming cars.

“So,” he said. Enjolras’s head shot up and he blinked, looking a little disoriented for a second, before turning to face Grantaire. “What is there to do around here?”

“Oh.” Enjolras dog-eared the page of his book (which was so fundamentally out of character for him Grantaire began to question reality) and closed it with a satisfying ‘thunk,’ sitting back in his chair, the picture of ease and leisure. “I read, mostly. When it gets warmer we swim or boat, and some people fish in the mornings.”

Grantaire rolled his eyes. “What if, just floating it out there, I don’t want to fish? What do we do then?”

“Do you want to go for a walk?”

For a moment Grantaire thought he was joking but he looked absolutely serious, all decked out in his shorts and athletic sneakers. “Okay.” God, Eponine would never get over this. “Okay, let’s go for a walk.”

Grantaire would never admit it to Enjolras but he felt, the moment he stepped out of the house, that the walk was a good idea. It felt good to stretch his legs, plus something about the neck of the woods they were in was so intoxicating to Grantaire- it felt like a work of art. He wanted to get out an easel and paint, right there, but if he had to suffer a stroll with Enjolras instead, that was alright. He could handle a walk.

The kids in the street ran out of their way, which Grantaire found funny. They seemed to see two high schoolers just as scary as a car. 

They had made it only a few feet down the road when Enjolras hissed, “take my hand.” Grantaire looked down to Enjolras’s hand, which he had stretched out towards Grantaire, fingers splayed. “My mom’s up there talking to our neighbors. We’re boyfriends. Take my hand.”

Grantaire complied.

Enjolras’s hand was a little sweaty but that didn’t matter because sure enough, Grantaire could see two women standing by the water, deep in conversation. Enjolras was a weaver, never walking on one straight path, drifting left and right and occasionally bumping hips with Grantaire. 

They walked the dirt path that skirted the lake in relative silence. Every once in a while a car would come and they would have to stand ankle-deep in the grass on the side of the road and wait for it to pass them, but for the most part they only encountered squirrels and birds and a few people walking their dogs. 

They didn’t let go of each other’s hands.

About ten minutes in Grantaire finally realized that Enjolras’s hand was still in his, not gripping it tightly like he had been as they passed his mother but gently, calmly, like he had forgotten what his hand was doing, like it was perfectly natural for their fingers to be tangled together. 

It was a nice walk, though. The trees were thick further down the road, and the only hint of the sun was the way it came down in columns through the canopy, dappling the ground. Grantaire watched the way the shadows shifted; the whole thing seemed vaguely psychedelic, like those magic-eye puzzles. 

On their left the forest seemed to stretch on indefinitely, and on their right, tucked in between trees and cabins and boathouses were flashes of the lake, sparkling blue and green. There was a small white sailboat with a sail the colors of a sunset that cut about the lake, disappearing and reappearing from sight.

“Do you know how to sail?” Grantaire asked. It was a random question, sprung straight from the tongue, unobserved by the brain. His voice hardly seemed to make a noise in the thick silence of the woods.

Enjolras absentmindedly swung their hands between them. “Yeah.” 

“Can we go sailing?” Grantaire let his hand move in tandem with Enjolras’s. It felt simple and easy. 

“I don’t have a sailboat,” Enjolras answered practically.

The whole conversation was meaningless and Grantaire loved it. He loved talking to Enjolras without thinking, without overanalyzing every word. “Do you have somebody you hate that you could steal a sailboat from?”

Enjolras laughed, a lazy kind of chuckle. “If you really want to go sailing, I’m sure I could ask around and borrow somebody’s boat.”

“It’s not like I’m dying to sail,” Grantaire said. “I was just talking.”

“Yeah.”

At the end of the road there was an antique store run out of an old farmhouse. The whole thing was dilapidated and worn down, and there were tables and chests of drawers scattered about the lawn like statues in a royal garden. They went wandering across the grass, between the rusty watering cans with flowers shoved in them and old lamps without shades. 

A wind blew through the trees, wet and cold. Enjolras looked up to the sky, squinting into the sun. “It feels like rain,” he said.

Grantaire didn’t feel any rain, or whatever rainy feeling he was supposed to feel, but of the two of them, Enjolras was the one who knew how to sail and which tree the nuts that lay scattered on the road came from (they were dropped by beech trees, apparently) and actually wore sunscreen, so Grantaire kept his mouth shut and nodded. They turned around to head back to the cabin, the wind on their heels, blowing their hair into their faces.

They made it back to the trailer park just as the first droplets of rain landed on their skin. 

They ate dinner not at the table, which only had two chairs, but on the couch, all shoved up against each other. Enjolras did, though, have the forethought to place Grantaire on the end, though he kicked him every time he held his fork wrong.

Apparently the Enjolrases were big sticklers for manners.

Grantaire didn’t know quite how to feel. It was weird, feeling like he had wormed his way into something when he didn’t even really want to be there in the first place. Sitting there on the couch with them eating pasta, hating the way Enjolras’s knee pressed against his but loving the sound of distant radio from the cabin next to them. 

That night after they had washed the dishes and changed into pajamas (Grantaire in the bedroom, Enjolras in the bathroom) they each sat awake on the too-small bed, Grantaire scrolling through his phone and Enjolras reading a different book from that afternoon, a beat-up paperback copy of Dracula, in the dim orange of the lamp on the bureau. 

“Listen to this line,” Enjolras said suddenly. His voice sounded alien, breaking through the silence that had almost become comfortable. “How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads; to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams.” 

Grantaire set down his phone. The room was too small for a teenager, especially two of them. The walls were mostly bare, save for a framed print of a map of Europe by the door, but they were claustrophobic, the tiny windows set too high to offer any respite from the humidity and the lingering stuffiness of the room. “That’s a nice quote,” he said. He needed a drink of water. “Any reason why you’re sharing it?”

Enjolras smiled to himself. “When I’m up here, I always read Dracula before bed. I would always read out my favorite lines to Ferre before we went to sleep.”

“Oh.” Grantaire couldn’t stop his eyes from darting around the room, as if he was expecting to catch a monster lurking in a corner or behind the dresser. “Is it a good book?”

Enjolras snorted like Grantaire had just said a joke that only he understood. “Well, it’s not particularly thrilling. But yeah, it’s a good book. At this point it’s just nice to have something to read that I know so well. I’m going to turn off the light, is that cool?”

Grantaire nodded. The room was suddenly awash in darkness. It felt bigger without the light, the walls all but disappearing. For all Grantaire knew, it was just Enjolras’s queen sized bed sitting in the middle of the woods, the trees stretching on forever. He lay still, half in and half out of the covers, for a while. Nothing but the sound of a loon crying on the lake and Enjolras breathing next to him, not even enough to signify sleep. 

“Wait,” he said. Enjolras clicked the lamp back on. Grantaire blinked in the sudden light. There was something that had been bugging him since he got into the car that morning, and he had just realized what it was. “Your name is _Maison_?”

Grantaire could hear Enjolras heave a sigh, though there was no real emotion in it. Just annoyance that his well-guarded secret had been found out. “Yeah.”

“Doesn’t- doesn’t that mean house?” 

Enjolras laughed. “Shut the hell up.” Grantaire could hear a car pass, could see the headlights illuminate the dim room in a ghostly pale light for a split second. “Shut up. You take Mandarin, how do you know what house means in French?”

“I know plenty of words in French,” Grantaire argued. “Maison. Grenouille. Bonjour.” He tried to think back to all the French he knew, those 90s French pop songs that Eponine went through a phase of. “Croissant.”

“Shut the hell up,” Enjolras repeated.

That was the last thing either of them said. Enjolras turned off the light one last time and sank down into the bed, immediately using about 70% of the sheets.

Grantaire laid on his side, facing away from Enjolras; he was normally a back sleeper, but just lying there, like a plank, trying not to touch Enjolras felt a little too on the nose. Enjolras shifted around a lot before finally settling down- Grantaire didn’t bother to look. Enjolras could have been doing a fucking handstand on his side of the bed for all he cared. 

Everything felt different once the lights were off, once the banter had run dry. For the first time Grantaire fully realized how absolutely insane this whole thing was. Lying there, without a font of bullshit to fall back on, he felt exposed, like he was being watched by a jury on high, hidden up in the trees. The beech trees, the ones that had dropped the nuts.

For a long time it was just the sound of nature and the patter of the rain on the roof and Enjolras’s even breathing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey hey hey so i think i'm going to go on a short hiatus bc i've run out of prewritten chapters and i haven't been super motivated to write recently :/ i have the whole thing planned, so i definitely plan on finishing. i might have to put this aside until school ends in a couple weeks, but please hold me accountable bc i want to keep this going.
> 
> (PS Maison is basically the french version of the name Mason)
> 
> i finished she-ra. feel free to scream about it with me in the comments :)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello hello! I've basically been infusing my blood with fake dating aus so I figured I would contribute a little. If you're reading this, thanks. If you know me irl and you're reading this, fucking stop. :)
> 
> (Title is from the poem Propositions by Stephen Dunn)


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